The Pulwama mastermind would never have been caught by the NIA if they hadn’t chanced upon his damaged phone, which subsequently revealed his penchant for sportswear and his alleged relationship with a woman Insha Jan from Kashmir. 

According to a new book by author and journalist Rahul Pandita, Rakesh Balwal — the National Investigation Agency (NIA) head of Jammu and Kashmir — had got nowhere in his investigation even six months after the Pulwama attack, which took the lives of 40 CRPF jawans on February 14, 2019. 

Back then, according to the author, the Indian intelligence agencies had still been unaware that the mastermind behind the attack — Masood Azhar’s nephew Umar Farooq —  had already crossed over into Kashmir, or even that he had been killed in an encounter just a month after Pulwama.

So how did the NIA join the dots, you ask? Ironically it had been Umar Farooq’s love for two things — sportswear and a woman. 

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As revealed in the new book by Pandita — who interviewed investigating officers from the NIA and the local police to connect the dots — the case unravelled thanks to a photograph. 

The NIA head of J&K told Pandita that it was his gut feeling that led him to the realization, while looking at a photo of the slain terrorists in Pulwama, that the Pulwama mastermind had secrets hidden beneath his well-groomed, Adidas-wearing exterior.

The author had been told by the police that the young, baby-faced man in the Adidas jacket was called Idrees bhai. The police also revealed that they had confiscated two phones off their person — an iPhone and a Samsung S-9 plus — that were too damaged and, hence, useless.

But Balwal had been convinced that the phone held the key to the mystery. Prompted by his beliefs, the local NIA head used the occasion of the Kashmir IG’s farewell to appeal that the phones be sent to the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In).

A whole week passed before Balwal received a response, but it was a fruitful wait. They had managed to get their hands on the jackpot. The 100 GB of data on the phone included a selfie of three men; one of them being the Pulwama bomber Adil Dar, and the other Idrees bhai — who they would later find to be the Pulwama mastermind. 

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“In another photo in Idrees Bhai’s phone, the NIA investigators noticed a package from Amazon. They sent the consignment number to the company, which got back saying it was sent to one Waiz-ul-Islam, who had in the last few transactions bought aluminum powder, battery, chargers, knives, and a pair of size 13 shoes,” the author narrated in his book, as quoted by Times of India.

The book discloses that Umar had allegedly been in a relationship with a woman, Insha Jan, a 22-year-old from Kashmir’s Pulwama. As per the author, he used his phone to chat with her. Sentimentally, Umar made the mistake of not destroying his phone — despite being given instructions to do that by Masood Azhar’s brother Rouf Asghar, the operational head of Jaish — which led to him being discovered as the mastermind behind the attack.