Pakistan militants are now using a new corridor to enter the country. According to a recent report of the intelligence agencies sent to their Delhi headquarters, a route through Bangladesh surfaced during investigations into the movement of three Jaish-e-Mohammed ultras, who were killed in Lucknow, and one Lashkar-e-Taiba militant, who was shot dead in Faizabad recently. Similar details came to light during the grilling of two Pakistan-trained ISI agents arrested by the Special Task Force (STF) last month.
Seen as the safest passage to India till recently, the Indo-Nepal border is being avoided by the ultras owing to the heightened Maoist activity in the Himalayan Kingdom and the extra-alert security forces of the two countries.
Heightened vigil along the Rajasthan and Gujarat borders has also forced the militants to opt for the Bangladesh route, revealed an officer citing information gathered during the interrogation of Altaf Husain and Salim Qamar, the two Pakistan-trained militants owing allegiance to the LeT who were arrested in Lucknow on August 13, and from whom RDX, firearms and ammunitions were recovered.
The West Asia route via Mumbai too is no longer considered viable as the intelligence agencies there are exploiting the Dawood-Chhota Rajan rivalry to their advantage, sources said.
The Bangladesh route came to light when the route taken by the three JeM ultras killed in Lucknow on April 18 last was traced. Two of the militants were from Sindh, and the third from Lahore. Investigating their movements in India, the intelligence agencies managed to locate the house which they had rented in West Bengal soon after they landed in India via Dhaka.
Further investigations revealed that the three were on a suicide mission and had planned to load RDX on a truck and then ram the vehicle into the disputed structure at Ayodhya.
The intelligence agencies, sources said, discovered that the three had already bought a truck from a small-time transporter in Cuttack (Orissa) before they moved to UP.
Interestingly, in the Godbole report
recently submitted on the security and porosity of the international borders,
particularly those accessible to Pakistani agents, it was feared that the
Bangladesh route was one sector which needed more attention.