Author: Johnson T A
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: January 12, 2009
URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/we-were-all-set-to-hit-bangalore-again-last-year-lashkar-operative-to-police/409596/
The arrest in February last year of Sabahuddin
Ahmad, linked to the Lashkar-e-Toiba and now being investigated in connection
with the Mumbai attacks, foiled plans for a second fidayeen attack in Bangalore.
This was planned on the lines of the December 2005 attack on the Indian Institute
of Science.
Sabahuddin, who was trained by the Lashkar-e-Toiba
and brought weapons and trained militants from Kashmir and Pakistan to carry
out the IISc attack that killed a professor, has told investigators that a
second attack in Bangalore was in the final stages of execution at the time
of his arrest in February 2008.
Sabahuddin, who used the cover of a student
of the Presidency College to carry out the IISc attack before fleeing to Pakistan,
used the same modus operandi to plant a LeT-trained Maldivian youth in a Bangalore
college in August 2006.
Police sources said the Maldivian youth identified
by Sabahuddin as Abu Akrama alias Ehsan Ali alias Rizwan disappeared, possibly
after the February 2008 arrest of Sabahuddin in connection with investigations
into the attack on the CRPF camp in Rampur, Uttar Pradesh.
Sabahuddin told police he first met Abu Akrama
at an electronics laboratory of the Lashkar-e-Toiba in Pakistan. Providing
a description of Akrama who was 22 in 2006, Sabahuddin said Akrama was planted
in Brindavan College under an operation supervised by Pakistan-based Lashkar
leader Muzammil alias Yousuf.
The youth who registered for a commerce course
was tasked with identifying targets in Bangalore and subsequently help in
carrying out an attack by bringing in weapons and suicide attackers in collaboration
with Sabahuddin, the police have learnt.
"In October 2006, Muzammil told me Abu
Akrama was well established in Bangalore so he must be given some task. He
told me Abu Akrama would be supplied with weapons at Bangalore and a fidayeen
would be sent to him," Sabahuddin told investigators. "His task
was to receive the weapons, store it safely, receive the fidayeen, provide
shelter, survey the target and send the fidayeen for action," Ahmad said.
According to Sabahuddin, the Lashkar leadership
was keen on carrying out an attack on the International Technology Park in
Bangalore while Abu Akrama himself had zeroed in on the police commissioner's
office and an ISRO campus.
Sabahuddin told police he was sent from Pakistan
to meet Akrama in Colombo in mid-October 2006 to finalise the plans for the
attack in Bangalore. After they met, they created fake email IDs to relay
secret messages regarding the operation and finalised code words - for example,
language course for reconnaissance, project file for weapons and USB for fidayeen.
Akrama flew out to Bangalore subsequently while Sabahuddin returned to Pakistan.
"We don't really know what happened,
whether Abu Akrama returned to Bangalore or not. Checks at the Brindavan College
after Sabahuddin's arrest last year showed there was no student fitting the
description or name," police sources said.