Bangalore has been on the hit list

Bangalore has been on the hit list
The Times of India

New Delhi/Bangalore: Bangalore has been on the terror radar for some time now. Wednesday’s incident outside the IISc campus, though not confirmed as a terrorist attack, could just be a warning.

The first alert came in March this year when it was revealed that the three Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorists killed in Delhi had planned to attack software companies in Bangalore. According to the Delhi police, the associates of those killed had revealed this dangerous plot.

The terrorists had visited Bangalore in December last year and surveyed the locations of several software companies here. The news had shaken the police and software firms.

Though there has been no terrorist strike in Bangalore ever, the intelligence has information that extremists, including LTTE and Naxals, have taken shelter here. Police claim precautionary measures have been taken.

The latest alert came with the arrest of three persons in Delhi on Monday. The Delhi police claimed to have foiled a terror plan to kill some leading politicians and target software parks, market places and railway stations across the country.

The trio, after questioning, revealed that they had been planning to target some prominent politicians in Andhra Pradesh, software parks in Hyderabad and Bangalore and markets and railway stations in North India, the police said, adding that the three had undergone training in Baluchistan Province of Pakistan.

Special Cell sleuths, in a joint operation with the West Bengal police, had arrested two persons from Murshidabad district of the state, including a terrorist of Bangladesh-based Harkatul-Jehad, when they were exchanging weapons smuggled from Bangladesh, joint commissioner (Special Cell) Karnal Singh told reporters here.

Interrogation of the duo revealed that one of them was Hilaluddin, a Bangladeshi national of Harkat-ul-Jehad, and was a co-conspirator in the blast at the STF office in Hyderabad on October 12, he said. A third person, Mohammad Ibrahim, was arrested in Hyderabad and brought for questioning here early in December, Singh said.

“Interrogation revealed that Pakistan’s ISI had opened terrorist training camps in Baluchistan and have been ferrying Indians and Bangladeshi nationals to provide weapons training,” he said.