Author:
Publication: newkerala.com
Date: June 26, 2004
URL: http://news.newkerala.com/india-news/?action=fullnews&id=25347
A young college woman and three
men killed in an alleged shootout with police in Gujarat were linked to
a terrorist group but Indian intelligence had infiltrated their operation,
a report said Saturday.
The Hindu newspaper said in a front-page
story that the June 15 killings in Ahmedabad city followed an elaborate
intelligence operation that was linked to terrorist groups operating in
Jammu and Kashmir.
A storm of protests broke out after
the Gujarat Police claimed the four, also including two suspected Pakistani
men and an Indian man besides the young woman, were shown killed on a highway
while trying to assassinate state Chief Minister Narendra Modi.
Some politicians even alleged that
the killings were stage-managed and probably done by a trigger-happy police
to bolster the standing of a politically beleaguered Modi amid a rebellion
from party colleagues.
But the Hindu said while the police
claims may have been overblown, "the group was indeed engaged in reconnaissance
for a suicide squad attack on Hindu fundamentalist leaders.
"But the mission was monitored by
intelligence agencies at each stage and infiltrated from its outset."
The Gujarat Police had said all
four were linked to the Pakistan-based Laskher-e-Taiba, which is part of
a separatist campaign raging in Jammu and Kashmir.
Among the dead were two suspected
Pakistani terrorists who had been operating in Jammu and Kashmir for about
a year. The June 15 killings followed a four-month-long covert operation
by the Intelligence Bureau, the Hindu said.
The operation was sparked by a letter
discovered on the person of a Lashker commando killed with six other terrorists
by Indian security forces in the Poonch area of Jammu and Kashmir on Feb
20.
Among other things, the letter,
authored by an inmate of a prison in Ahmedabad, revealed the identity of
an Indian lawyer who had helped the Laskher in the past.
After some persuasion, the Hindu
said, the lawyer began cooperating with Indian intelligence, which began
using him to lure Lashker cadre to Gujarat.
The lawyer was instructed to tell
Javed Sheikh, an Indian who was among the four killed June 15, that "the
infrastructure was in place to execute an attack on Modi.
"Much of their subsequent dealing
was conducted through Ishrat Jahan, (the) Mumbai (woman) college student
whose killing sparked off furious protests.
"Police officials in Ahmedabad now
have in their possession records of several calls she had made to Javed
from a public telephone centre in Mumbai."
By early May, Javed had requisitioned
two suicide squad members to launch the actual attack, the Hindu said.
Consequently, the Border Security
Force intelligence wing picked up signals of the movement of terrorists
from Jammu and Kashmir to interior India.
Laskher asked the terrorists, in
coded language, to report to a handler in Udhampur town, near Jammu, and
then proceed to Ahmedabad via New Delhi.
The two dead Pakistani terrorists
had hoped to reach Ahmedabad - which witnessed large-scale anti-Muslim
violence in 2002 -- days or hours before the intended assault on Hindu
fundamentalist leaders.
But the police intercepted the group
on Ahmedabad's outskirts and shot them dead.
