26/11: Financier gave Rs 4 mn to LeT, sent to judicial remand

Sufayan Zafar has joined the other six suspects – Abdul Wajid, Mazhar Iqbal, Hammad Amin Sadiq, Shahid Jameel Riaz, Jamil Ahmed and Mohammad Younis Anjum –  in the high-security Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi, where they are lodged since 2009.

Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) operations commander Zaki-ur Rehman Lakhvi, the mastermind of the Mumbai attack, is living at an undisclosed location, after being released from jail on bail over a year ago.

The anti-terrorism court sent Zafar on the judicial remand on Saturday, noting that the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) had been given enough time to probe the suspect, a source in the agency said.

He is accused of providing Rs 3.98 million to co-accused Riaz through account no. 2338-2 of the Muslim Commercial Bank’s Drigh Road branch in Karachi and account no. 2464-0 of the Allied Bank’s Drigh Colony branch in Karachi prior to the Mumbai terror attack. The FIA quizzed him over providing millions of rupees to the suspected terrorists of the Mumbai attack case, his relations with them and other absconding suspects, the source said.

“The FIA has interrogated Zafar for providing financial assistance to the co-accused in the Mumbai case besides his connection with the terrorists and the LeT. He was also interrogated for the channel/source from which he got the huge sum of money to provide it to the co-accused,” he said.

Zafar was on the run after being declared proclaimed offender in the Mumbai case. He was arrested early this month from his hideout in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province. A resident of Gujrawala district of Punjab - some 80 kms from Lahore, Zafar is among 21 other absconding suspects wanted in this high-profile case.