Terror suspects planned to attack defence centres: Govt

The Central government on Saturday said that a major terror strike was averted as eleven persons arrested from Karnataka were planning to carry out attacks on defence and nuclear installations. 

Union Home Secretary R K Singh told reporters the eleven arrested men who had links with banned terrorist organisations Lashkar-e-Toiba and Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami, had a defence establishment and a nuclear installation on their radar for carrying out attacks.

Singh said: “Interrogation of those arrested in Bangalore has revealed that this module had a defence establishment and a nuclear installation on its radar. Lashkar and HuJI operatives are handlers of the group”.

Ministry sources said that the Kaiga nuclear power plant and the Sea Bird Naval base at Karwar were on their hit list.

“We believe a major threat has been averted with the busting of this module,” the home secretary added.

Sources said that some members of the terror module were in touch with associates of Bilal Sheikh who died a mysterious death in Pakistan some time back.

Interestingly, the group which was talking to their handlers in Saudi Arabia through Skype to avoid detection by the security agencies was also spotted sending coded messages while Karnataka police were patrolling cyber world to quell rumours of hate attack against persons of North-East origin post Assam violence, government sources said.

Instrumental in exposing the latest terror network, the intelligence agencies are coordinating with other states to unearth other associates at large.

Four more arrests

Meanwhile in Maharashtra, the Anti Terror Squad (ATS) has arrested four terror suspects from Nanded district for their alleged links with the accused arrested in Bangalore recently, an ATS official said on Saturday.

“We have arrested four persons, who have links with the terror suspects arrested in Bangalore,” ATS chief Rakesh Maria said.

However, Maria refused to divulge any further details. According to police sources, following the arrest of the terror suspects in Bangalore by the local police, they had shared some information with Maharashtra ATS officials, which resulted in the arrest of these four in Nanded.

The four suspects were picked up from various parts of Nanded district since past two days following a tip-off about their possible involvement in terror activities.