Pak-backed terror modules spread tentacles across India

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s admission that terror modules exist in Mumbai is just the tip of the iceberg. For, the network of Pakistan’s ISI-backed terror modules extends far and wide.

A favourite modus operandi of dreaded terrorist outfits like Lashker-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad is to break up their terror chain into small groups of 3-4 or 6-8 members each, better known as modules, and ensure that none of the modules who may be entrusted with various aspects of executing an attack are in touch with each other.

The purpose, obviously, is to make it difficult for the security and intelligence agencies to trace the origins of a terrorist conspiracy.

While a mastermind, often from Pakistan, meticulously plans a jehadi attack choosing the time and target to be hit, the arms/explosives are arranged and delivered to the attackers by a separate module, the logistics arranged by another and the actual attack carried out by yet another module which may remain a sleeper for months before the big strike.

Then they are separate ISI-backed espionage modules that are entrusted with spying on our State secrets. Each module works independently from one another, so much so that they are not even supposed to make any calls to one another for fear of coming under the surveillance of intelligence agencies.

Often, investigators, even if they manage to bust a particular ISI-backed module, find it difficult to prevent the final attack simply because terrorists belonging to be busted module may be clueless about the whereabouts and antecedents of the attacker module.

Security agencies have, nevertheless, been following intelligence leads based on intercepts of conversation between terrorists and interrogation of arrested terrorists to identify and crack down upon ISI-backed modules that are known to operate not only in J&K, but in other states including Maharashtra, UP, Bengal, AP, Kerala and Delhi.

Between ’01-04 (when the NDA was in power) 112 ISI-backed terror modules and 81 espionage modules were busted across various states. This unearthed plots for various impending attacks, which could be subsequently foiled. In comparison, under the UPA government, 47 terror modules have been busted over ’04 and ’05.

While 45 terrorists belonging to these modules were eliminated between ’01-04, 41 killings were recorded in ’04 and ’05 after UPA came to power. Arrests of terrorists comprising these modules stood at 351 in ’01-04, as compared to 137 during the two years of UPA rule (’04 and ’05).

Arrests of persons involved in espionage during ’01-04 totalled 171, as compared to 28 in ’04 and ’05. The sleeper modules, besides mingling with the locals to get a feel of the place of attack and carrying out reccee and dry runs, employ local handlers from banned fundamentalist outfits like Simi for logistical support.

The thriving network of Simi in UP and Maharashtra has made these states a prime target of terrorist outfits like LeT with which the indigenous Islamic outfit shares close ideological ties.

The attack on Ayodhya temple and blast at Sankatmochan temple in Varanasi last year, besides the recent Mumbai train blasts preceded by an attack on RSS headquarters in Nagpur and a huge arms haul in Aurangabad, are a few of the joint LeT-Simi operations.