Security and intelligence agencies have unearthed plans of the Pakistan-based militant groups to launch more attacks in the Kashmir valley.
The plans came to light when the intelligence agencies intercepted conversations between the terrorists holed up in Jammu and Kashmir and their handlers in Pakistan, highly placed sources in the Home Ministry said on Thursday.
The sources said a number of modules of the Pakistan-trained terrorists were active in the valley to scout for easy targets in winter. Even as the security forces and the police ended the 22-hour siege at Lal Chowk and killed two suspected militants of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, the intelligence agencies came across plans for more such attacks to stymie the efforts to begin peace dialogues.
Concerned at the ‘fidayeen attack’ in the heart of Srinagar during peak winter, the Home Ministry has alerted its security mechanism. “We have specific information that Pakistan-trained terrorists are planning more such attacks to derail the peace talks,” a senior official said.
“The new strategy of the terror groups has something to do with the depleted security presence in Srinagar and other big towns of the valley following the shifting of the Secretariat to Jammu, the winter capital,” the official said.
The terrorists involved in the Lal Chowk attack were in constant touch with their handlers in Pakistan, he said. “They were taking instructions from them on cell phones.”
Preliminary investigations that Wednesday’s attack was masterminded by the LeT, and one of the terrorists was a Pakistani national, identified as Quari.
One hundred and ten Pakistan-trained hardcore terrorists infiltrated into Indian territory during 2009. In all, 473 incidents of infiltration took place, and 93 terrorists were killed on the border, Home Ministry officials said.
