New Delhi: The dreaded architect of some of the most gruesome terror attacks in India, Maulana Masood Azhar, was an “easy man” to handle in custody and he got shaken up on the first ‘slap’ from an army jawan prompting him to blurt out details of his movements, says a former police officer who interrogated him after his arrest in 1994.
Azhar was arrested in February 1994 in Anantnag in South Kashmir. In the custody, the intelligence agencies did not have to do much work on Azhar who started speaking after the first slap from an army officer and gave deep insights into the functioning of terror groups operating from Pakistan, the officer said.
He was an easy man to handle and a slap from an army officer had shaken him completely,” former Director General of Sikkim Police Avinash Mohananey, who interrogated Azhar during his two-decade tenure in the Intelligence Bureau, told PTI.
After his release in exchange of passengers of hijacked IC-814 flight of Indian Airlines in 1999 by the then BJP government, Azhar formed Jaish-e-Mohammed and scripted many audacious terror strikes in India, including on the Parliament House, Pathankot air force base, army camps in Jammu and Uri, and the latest suicide attack on CRPF in Pulwama which claimed the lives of 40 personnel.
