*Sacked from services
Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Aug 19: Jammu and Kashmir Bank today terminated the services of Sajad Ahmad Bazaz, Chief Manager of the Bank, who has turned out to be an agent of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence and a terror asset
His services were terminated by the Bank with immediate effect for being a threat to the security of the state, officials said.
In an order, the Managing Director of the bank stated that “after considering the facts and circumstances of the case contained in the report received from credible agencies that the activities of Sajad Ahmad Bazaz, posted at Internal Communication and Marketing Department are such as to warrant his dismissal from service under Rule/Provision 12.29 in OSM (Officers Service Manual).”
“The current bank management seemed to have no clue that Bazaz was one of the most important Pakistani assets, secretly working for ISI and terror outfits. After abrogation of Article 370, the top investigators were probing link of deep ISI assets within the terror ecosystem and his name cropped up. After month’s long painstaking investigation they were in for surprises. The investigators stated that Bazaz, originally a resident of Batamaloo Srinagar,was planted in J&K Bank in 1990 by Pakistan ISI. His appointment was on the post of Cashier-cum-Clerk. In 2004 he was suddenly given a jump to a position that was highly suspicious but it did not raise any eyebrow because of the then larger and deeper subversion in the system,” the official sources said.
They said Sajad was an embedded asset of the terrorist-separatist networks working on behalf of ISI.
Sources confirmed that Bazaz while being a full-time employee of J&K Bank was also a full-timer with a Kashmir based newspaper as a correspondent-cum-columnist. “This is open knowledge and known to all. Evidence collected by the agencies suggests that did not have honest intentions as a parallel employee of the newspaper can be seen in the different names under which he wrote and publish. Initially he used ‘Sajjad Ahmad’ as his penname. He cleverly added one additional ‘j’ and also dropped his surname ‘Bazaz’. Later with passage of time he got emboldened when neither his employer nor the law of the land could take cognizance of his wrongdoings, Sajad added his surname and wrote under byline ‘Sajjad Bazaz’, they said.
They added that all of his news stories and columns were centered around justifying and glorifying the secessionist-terrorist campaign in J&K. While some were subtle others were thinly veiled. Sajad through his ground reporting and opinion pieces published in his weekly columns titled ‘Off The Record’ and ‘What’s Up’, toed the Pakistani line of UN intervention in Kashmir, tripartite talks and human rights violations.
“Bazaz in a write up has conveyed three things. Firstly, he is angrily calling upon UN to intervene in Kashmir. Secondly, while doing so, he is categorizing Kashmir as an independent nation albeit a weak one. Thirdly, he unabashedly rejects the Shimla agreement because it has diluted the right to self-determination of people of Jammu and Kashmir. This is typical Hurriyat’s and Pakistan’s current public stance. It is absolutely untenable for an employee of an entity funded and owned by government like JK Bank to openly preach and practice secessionism,” the sources said.
He continued to peddle Pakistani official line on Kashmir for tripartite talks instead of India’s stand of bilateral talks as per Shimla agreement.
In another article, Sajad called for involvement of USA as a third party in Kashmir dispute which again is a discourse popularised by the Pakistan to keep the flame of violence burning in J&K.
He authored numerous write-ups and opinion pieces in the newspaper that supported the Pakistan ISI and terror outfits narrative on Kashmir.
“In yet another write-up in his weekly ‘What’s Up’ column, Sajad again “dutifully” serves the narrative of the adversary by questioning the genuineness of counter terrorist operations of police and security forces, giving an impression as if all the operations against the terrorists have been fake. If there have been any aberrations which by virtue of inbuilt checks and balances of the state have been detected and action taken as per rule of law. However, he like many other false narrative peddlers of the adversary has been sowing the seeds of doubt to instigate people against the security forces,” the sources said.
“The false flag of ‘mass and unmarked graves’ has been used by the Pakistani state and ISI to vilify the security forces and the Indian state locally, nationally and internationally. Tens of hundreds of Pakistani origin terrorists affiliated with dreaded terror outfits like Jaish-e-Mohammad, Lashkar-e-Toiba, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, Al-Badar etc have got killed in hundreds of encounters on LoC and in the hinterland whose dead bodies have been buried in several graveyards. Since there have been no takers of these dead bodies of these unknown foreign terrorists who operated under code names it has been impossible to put names on their graves. This has been extensively highlighted by Pakistan internationally with the help of its proxies in J&K. Sajad Ahmad Bazaz is a prominent Pak proxy in this effort,” the sources added.
They said on the subject of the circumstances in which Sajad Ahmad Bazaz was lifted from the chair of a clerk to that of a gazetted equivalent post of Editor, specially created for him, sources said that on 20th October 2003, a proposal for creating a post of Editor in J&K Bank was placed before the Board of Directors of J&K Bank and was got approved.
“Even before the approval of the proposal by the Board, the bank had already four days before, by way of an internal communication on 16th October 2003 invited applications from the cadre of Cashier-cum-Clerks to apply for the newly created post of Editor,” they added.
“The eligibility norms were tailored to bring in Sajad Ahmad Bazaz. Firstly, the provision of a written test was waived off. Secondly, the catchment was restricted to the category of cashier-cum-clerk cadre to give an undue advantage to Sajad. In itself, this is a matter of criminal investigation wherein an officer grade post was not advertised and opportunity was not provided to members of general public to compete for the post. Thirdly, despite the best efforts to manipulate things in favour of Sajad, the adversary failed to erase footprints,” they said.
Despite open knowledge that Sajad was a full time employee of a newspaper even when he was on the rolls of J&K Bank, the interview board comprising the then Chairman of the Bank M.Y Khan, Director Haseeb Drabu, Chief General Manager P.Z Lateef and Deputy General Manager M.A Shah selected Sajad from among a very small group of four on the basis of an interview. The Board also ignored that he was rabidly against the Indian state and an open secessionist. In this context, the stranglehold and penetration of the adversary into the J&K Bank is in itself a matter of comprehensive enquiry,” the sources said.
The subsequent conduct of Sajad Ahmad Bazaz after having been placed in the chair of ‘Editor’ – a position specially created for him in J&K Bank further shows conspiracy and subversion. He empowered with the new authority enriched select local newspapers and news magazines through payment of advertisement money drawn from the coffers of J&K Bank. It is relevant to mention that he owes his selection and placement as Editor in the bank to a clique and coterie, of which he eventually became an important member, who had infiltrated into the governmental system to further the secessionist-terrorist campaign at the behest of Pakistan ISI, they added.
It is interesting to note that Sajad Ahmad Bazaz owns and operates as many as 68 accounts within the J&K Bank alone.
“Sajad Ahmad Bazaz is a critical component of the overall terror ecosystem carefully nurtured by the ISI & terror outfits. And the most defining feature of this ecosystem is to try and maintain an air-gap (by layering) between gun wielding terrorists and the entire paraphernalia that supports and protects these terrorists in a variety of ways. These include creating and providing popular legitimacy through a combination of the fear of gun and propagation of false narrative, obstructing and subverting rule of law through bar associations and advocates when the law enforcement attempts to book them and take the matter to legal conclusion, arrange strategic logistics such as finances and tactical logistics such as SIM cards, phones, transport, food, medical attention, hideouts, information about law enforcement agencies and security forces, parallel intelligence network to identify and kill all those who try to expose the terrorists and their ecosystem,” the sources said.
