Centre alerts states on LeT’s plans

NEW DELHI: Tipped off by the FBI of Lashker-e-Taiba's plans to strike the BARC nuclear facility, defence complexes across Delhi and Mumbai, the RSS headquarters in Nagpur, Shiv Sena headquarters at Dadar (Mumbai), besides civilian targets in Ahmedabad and Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, the Centre in its latest alert to the states has sought tightening of security around these potential targets as well as pro-active police action to bust the modules tasked with executing these attacks.

The information about LeT’s plot to carry out fresh terror strikes was shared with the Indian security agencies by a visiting FBI team last week. Among the targets that are said to have been scouted by LeT through terror suspect David Coleman Headley are the National Defence College and Raksha Bhavan here; residential complexes of the armed forces in Mumbai such as Jalvayu Vihar complex in Powai, Air India colony in Kalina, Santa Cruz, and the Shiv Sena Bhavan in Dadar; crowded places in Ahmedabad so as to inflict mass casualty and Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi.

According to the FBI, the LeT, using Headley as well as its other recruiting masterminds here, may already have set up local modules to carry out the plotted terror attacks.

In an immediate follow up, the Centre last week passed on the specific information on LeT’s potential targets to the states and alerted them to the possibility of fresh terror attacks. The FBI has assured New Delhi that it would liaise with the Pakistan authorities to get additional information on the intended targets here through the LeT handlers in its custody, including Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, Zarar Shah and Sajid Mir.

Incidentally, many serving officers of the Pakistani Army were collaborating with the LeT to give shape to its terror plans for India. Under what was codenamed the “Karachi project”, Pakistan-based Amir Raza Khan was coordinating with Indian terror kingpins including the Gujarat-based Rasool Party and Mufti Sufiyaana Patangia to recruit the local youth and send them to Pakistan for terror training. The trained youth would then be sent back to India to execute LeT’s terror plans here, thus helping to project the attacks as an act of indigenous elements.

Headley is believed to have videographed the premises of the National Defence College and the residential quarters at Raksha Bhawan, right opposite Hyderabad House, during his visit to Delhi earlier this year. He is also said to have surveyed the BARC facility, which anyway figures high on the terror hitlist and had gone through a security audit by the CISF as recently as last as a month ago.

With an eye for detail, Headley was the LeT’s reconnaissance pointsman for all its recent terror missions, including the 26/11 strikes in Mumbai.