'Hijackers may get refuge in Sudan, Nigeria'

The Nation

NEW DELHI (Internews)-The three dreaded militants released by the Indian government in exchange of 160-odd Indian hostages are likely to get asylum either in Afghanistan or Pakistan after spending some time in another Islamic country, intelligence sources said.
A top-secret report prepared by RAW, according to Rediff on Sunday, has "indicated that people sympathetic to the hijackers' cause may get them refuge in Sudan, Nigeria or Saudi Arabia before they are provided asylum in Afghanistan or Pakistan."
"The three militants - Masood Azhar, Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar and Ahmed Omar Syed - will ultimately sneak into Kashmir," the report claims. The RAW report says the terrorists will "cool off in one of these countries till the heat on the hijack of the Indian Airlines Flight 814 dies down."
"Thereafter," it claims, "they will receive fresh training and indoctrination in an Afghan or Pakistani training camp before being sneaked into Jammu and Kashmir." According to the report, the intelligence agencies have also denied that Gajendra Man Tamarkar, the Nepalese citizen who was alleged by a section of the Indian media as one of the hijackers, had any role in the entire crisis.
Speaking Rediff, a senior intelligence official said the information gathered till now has "not thrown up any indication of his involvement." Tamarkar disembarked at the Indira Gandhi International Airport on Friday night along with the other passengers. The official said the intelligence agencies would meet Tamarkar for "routine enquiries". But then any of the passengers could be contacted, he added.
"It was the media which made him the hijacker. Since the media was taking on everything, we decided to keep quiet," he said. Dr Anita Joshi, a pathologist on board Flight 814, said that Tamarkar, "was there all throughout, but we never thought he was one of the hijackers."
She attended to Satnam Singh, who was attacked by hijackers, and other passengers who were unwell through their eight-day ordeal. The Nepal government had angrily denied that one of its citizens was involved in the hijack.