Moral Of The Story: Refrain From Lighting Up, No Matter How Long You Have To Wait For The 7

Smoking on the subway platform is dumb* but doing it when your name is on the terrorist watch list is just dumb luck:

A man on the national terrorist watch list was smoked out by a sharp-eyed undercover cop yesterday, The Post has learned.

Ashish Nayyar, an Indian national, was spotted puffing away on a cigarette by the plainclothes cop on the elevated No. 7 train platform at Queensboro Plaza around midnight Thursday, law-enforcement sources said.

The officer issued him a ticket for smoking. When he did a warrant check on the smoker’s name, he discovered Nayyar was on the terror watch list.

Nayyar had a Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association card on him from a relative who is on the force, police sources said.

He was brought first to a Transit Division holding area, where NYPD counterterrorism detectives and FBI agents interrogated him, the sources said. It was determined that the FBI in Texas had put Nayyar on the list.

Sources said Nayyar’s relative on the NYPD came down to the interrogation and got “huffy,” but left when he was told what the situation was.

Authorities had no photo or fingerprints on file to compare with Nayyar’s but were able to conclude he was the man on the watch list because he gave police information — his mother’s name and his hometown in India — that matched the data on the watch list.

After investigators confirmed his address and his employment, they decided that he was “not a player” in terrorism, a law-enforcement source said.

And it didn’t end there:

He was released into the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents for being in the United States illegally, sources said.

*You’d be surprised how many undercover cops seem to be looking out for this.