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The Central Bureau of Investigation, which conducted an investigation into the hijacking of Indian Airlines flight IC 814 in December 1999 has clarified that Hyder alias Imtiaz Siddiqi alias Mansur Hasnain does not figure in its case.
CBI spokesman S M Khan told rediff.com that Hyder does not feature in the agency's investigation.
"It is a possibility that when we conduct further investigations his name may figure. But as of today we are not looking for him," Khan clarified.
Hyder has been named by the Pakistani police as the key suspect in the kidnapping of American journalist Daniel Pearl. He is said to have masterminded the 1999 hijack of the Indian Airlines flight from Kathmandu.
'I owe my life to him,' Syed Omar Sheikh, one of the three terrorists the Government of India released in exchange for the crew and passengers of the hijacked Airbus on December 31, 1999, told investigators in Pakistan after his arrest earlier this week. Sheikh is also a suspect in the Pearl abduction.
Senior Delhi police officers, who investigated Sheikh's kidnappings in India, said there were similarities in the modus operandi adopted by Sheikh in India and Pakistan.
" The modus operandi is the same. In our terminology we call it friendly kidnappings. He would first get friendly with his victim and then kidnap him," a senior Delhi police officer told rediff.com
In 1994 Sheikh kidnapped American citizen Bela Nuss and some British citizens to secure the release of terrorists in Indian prisons including Maulana Masood, who was eventually released with Sheikh on December 31, 1999. But he ran out of luck and was arrested by the Uttar Pradesh police in Ghaziabad district.
"Sheikh kept his hostages alive for a long time because he wanted to bargain. I do not think he had the same motive in the case of the American journalist. Besides keeping a journalist alive for such a long time and later risk his release would be too much for Sheikh," an intelligence official told rediff.com
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