Investigations into the recent smashing of a Lashkar-e-Tayyaba module by intelligence agencies has revealed that there is a growing concern among the top hierarchy of terror outfits about the sudden drop in militant activities in India, particularly in the Kashmir Valley and other major cities.
Interestingly, sources claim, that frustration was now creeping into the LeT top brass and they are now more determined than ever to carryout a ‘big strike’.
In fact, these instructions have come directly from none other than Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, founder of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa and a key LeT ideologue. Highly-placed intelligence sources said Saeed has categorically told Abu Hamza, the operational chief of LeT in India to launch a spate of attacks in important Indian cities.
Hamza has also been told to prepare a separate blueprint for increasing violence in Kashmir during the coming summer season.
The three LeT militants arrested recently from Delhi and Hazaribagh in Jharkhand have revealed that they were in contact with Hamza and were receiving instruction directly from him.
According to one of the Lashkar operative Ehtesham Malik, who even visited Pakistan for training in assembling explosives, disclosed during questioning that Hamza had told him that LeT was under tremendous pressure from Saeed and Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence to increase militant activities in India.
Though Hamza is known to be extremely secretive in his operations but he once told Malik that he had already set up several modules and sleeper cells across India. These modules, intelligence sources claim, have now been set up in smaller Indian cities to avoid suspicion.
“That is what explains why this particular module had set up a base in Hazaribagh. Though the explosives had been procured locally from a middleman in Hazaribagh only, so far we have not found any direct evidence of linking these militants with Naxal outfits of Jharkhand,’’a top intelligence official said.
This particular module was to target the cloth market at Chandni Chowk and then the main branch of the State Bank of India in Srinagar.