ISI's Lareb managed troop info through low rank officials

Lucknow, Sep 25 (UNI) Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) operative Lareb Khan, arrested recently by the Special Task Force (STF) in the Uttar Pradesh capital, had managed to send sensitive troop information to his bosses across the border, police sources said today.

STF and intelligence agencies claim Taseen Azeem, alias Lareb Khan was a ''brilliant'' operative, who caused extensive damage by sniffing out sensitive information about troop movement by paying off low ranking officials of Central Command located here.

His interrogation has revealed that he had even sent details of the number of officials posted at the Central Command and their phone numbers to his handlers. The over 70-pages of information sent by e-mail to Pakistan has now reportedly been downloaded by the STF through the 'sent folder' of his e-mail acount.

ISI and Military Intelligence (MI) had trained Taseen at a camp near Caprie Cinema Hall in Karachi. Taseen underwent training for a total of four months. Such camps usually comprise of about 25 trainees per batch. Since his handlers were impressed with Taseen, he was imparted another month of training after the routine course was over.

ISI had named his operations in UP as 'Operation Lareeb Khan'.

Taseen's brief was to cover Lucknow and Jhansi. He was supposed to keep an eye on troop movement, find out details of strategic locations and ultimately infiltrate Pakistanis into the defence forces. State DGP Bua Singh claimed here that Lareb was arrested when he was about to inflitrate his men as employees of the Central Command.

Taseen had failed to get forged marksheets, driving licence and passport from Mumbai. However, in UP he got a high school, a 10+2 (both UP Board), a graduation certificate (Allahabad University) and a driving license made through a tout.

UNI NAB MB LL SSC1255