The Srinagar-born pilot Nadeem Ahmad Khateeb, who had passed out as a commercial pilot in South-eastern School of Aeronautics, Georgia, USA in 1994, had been working as a flight instructor in the same institute. Sources say he had joined a Pan-Islamic militant group and had been active in Chechnya and Bosnia before returning home.

Inspector General, Border Security Force, Jammu, U C Chhabra told The Indian Express that Nadeem was highly motivated. A note found in his diary said, "A day of mujahid is equal to 60 years of prayers".

On asked why the security forces kept quiet despite recovering a driving licence issued in the US from Nadeem, he said all the documentsrecovered from Nadeem had already been sent to Delhi for verification.

However, sources say the security forces had deliberately maintained secrecy given the sensitivity of the matter, as they apprehended the slain militant to be a US citizen.

"Yes, we are now being confronted by a highly motivated lot of militants.

However, most of them are foreigners and belong to Lashkar-e-Toiba, Harkat-ul-Ansar and Al Badr outfits," said a senior officer while admitting the counter-insurgency agencies are concerned about this trend.

Highly placed sources said the security agencies operating in Jammu are worried by the sophistication in militancy across the region and are also trying to explore a possible link between the recovery of two aeroplanes and the slain pilot-turned-militant. The police and security forces had seized two remote-controlled aircraft in dense forests of Kalakote in November 1998. According to the police, these sophisticated five-feet long aircraft could fly at the speed of 200 kmph. Theaircraft had in-built cavities which could be filled with explosives and its powerful engines could take the object about 500-600 ft high. The two-km range of the remote-controlled device had made this aircraft a deadly weapon when the operator does not want to confront the forces directly, a senior police officer said.

Though the security agencies are yet to establish any link between Nadeem and the aircraft, the Deputy Inspector General (DIG) of Police, Rajouri Range, K Rajendra agreed that the militants operating across the region have gone hi-tech. "They have an efficient wireless communication network which we find very difficult to bust," he said.