It was mid-monsoon and dark, but the Border Security Force (BSF) sniper had sighted his target with his infrared binoculars. The man was spotted crouching at the barbed wire fence at Abohar, near the Line of Control (LoC), the military control line between the Indian and Pakistani administered parts of Jammu and Kashmir. It was around 2 a.m. on 1 July 1998. After a heavy shower around an hour earlier, the ground was soggy and fragrant with the aroma of wet soil, crops and wildflowers.

The shots rang through the air, startling the birds sleeping in the fields on both sides of the LoC. A peacock called somewhere close by. The sniper switched on his walkie-talkie and informed his superior that he had shot an intruder at the border. Till now, this was a routine encounter between a Pakistani intruder and Indian security personnel.

Minutes later, two BSF commandos crawled to the spot where the man lay by the barbed wire, on the Pakistani side of the border. They cut the wires quickly, pulled the body through and dragged it to the regimental office. The dead man was clad in the typical Pakistani jihadi combat fatigues, with a rucksack containing almonds, cashews, maps of all the army cantonments across north India, a few thousand Indian rupees in counterfeit notes, magazines and two improvised explosive devices (IEDs) without detonators. He was also carrying an AK-47 and a revolver.

Pakistani wireless chatter intercepted a few hours later confirmed that the deceased was Abdul Malik, thirty-one, an LeT operative from Sargodha who had got separated from his team while making his way into India.

The encounter was covered prominently in the local and national newspapers as well as the electronic media. ‘Pak terrorist killed at LoC by BSF sniper,’ the headlines screamed. The BSF was happy. The regional army command made inquiries into the details of the killed intruder, while the defence ministry hosted journalists at a press conference to alert them about the foiled Lashkar plan to kill the then chief minister of Punjab.

Shekhar sent a junior CTC officer, Vinay Rathod, to run a routine check on the encounter and the recoveries made from the dead man. Rathod was briefed about the encounter in detail by the local BSF officers. He offered CTC’s congratulations to the officers and expressed his desire to go through the belongings of the deceased Pakistani.

‘Don’t worry, we have already defused the two IEDs,’ a BSF officer laughed. He was slightly irritated by Rathod’s polite request. Was Rathod questioning the BSF’s ability to conduct the frisking of a dead man? That too, a week after the encounter?

Nevertheless, Rathod was taken to the BSF ‘maal khana’, or warehouse. He asked the BSF sentry accompanying him to wait outside the room as the operation was confidential. He began scouring through the recoveries – clothes, rucksack, the Fake Indian Counterfeit Note (FICN) bundles, the magazines and weapons.