Lashkar plans 'big strikes' in Kashmir, rest of India: Abu Jundal
With a Kashmir at peace not to their liking, the Pakistan-based
Lashkar-e-Taiba is planning major terror attacks in the state and
elsewhere in India, Abu Jundal, one of the arrested handlers of the 2008
Mumbai attackers, has revealed to his interrogators.
Jundal, believed to be "mine of information" on the Lashkar and its anti-India plans, also told his interrogators that the group was
planning to push hundreds of trained gunmen and weapons into Kashmir.
"The group wants to revive militancy in Jammu and Kashmir,
particularly make its presence felt in urban areas," a reliable source
privy to his interrogation details told IANS.
The source said that Jundal, believed to the highest ranking Indian
in the terror outfit, had stayed for some time in Pakistan-administered
Kashmir before and after the Mumbai attack and became close to the
Kashmiri militant leadership in Muzaffarabad.
He told his interrogators that the United Jehad Council (UJC), an
amalgam of terror groups that operates out of Muzaffarabad, was making
elaborate plans to push fresh groups of terrorists into Jammu and
Kashmir through non-traditional routes along the Line of Control (LoC) -
a de facto border that divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan.
Jundal, deported to India from Saudi Arabia last month, has revealed
that these groups were planning to enter Kashmir through Poonch and
Rajouri in the Jammu region.
These militants, as per the Lashkar plans, will then be sent to
different parts of India where they will target places of worship and
other crowded spots.
"Peace in Kashmir has in particular upset the Lashkar. The Lashkar
leadership has asked the UJC commander (Syed Salahuddin who also heads
the Hizbul Mujahideen) to pull up its socks," the source quoted Jundal
as saying.
"They (militants) are planning big strikes in Kashmir," the source added, citing Jundal's interrogation.
Sources in Jammu and Kashmir Police told IANS that the information had been shared with them.
Subsequently, security has been beefed up, particularly for the
hundreds of thousands of Hindus visiting the Amarnath cave temple near
the south Kashmir tourist resort Pahalgam.
Kashmir Police sources said two recent militant strikes in south
Kashmir in which a soldier and two policemen were killed may be part of
the latest Lashkar strategy.
Jundal, who is being questioned at the heavily guarded Special Cell
office of Delhi Police, has told his interrogators that it was actually a
Kashmiri Lashkar commander who got him into the group.
Aslam Kashmiri, a known militant commander in the custody of Delhi
Police after his arrest in 2009, met Jundal in Beed district of
Maharahstra in 2005 through another Lashkar militant, Fayaz Kagzi.
Kashmiri, the sources said, had been given the job of recruiting into the outfit young Indian Muslims who could be radicalised.
They said Jundal was an easy target for Kashmiri because he was highly sentimental and was mesmerised by his jehadi talk.
Comments