2 J&K men held in inter-state terror plot to strike Delhi

Union Home Minister P Chidambaram announced here today that the police had foiled a major terror attack in Delhi with the arrest of two members of the banned Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT). Inquiries by The Indian Express have revealed an elaborate inter-state surveillance operation that began in Sopore in the Valley a month ago which has led to the arrest of the two Kashmiri men and the discovery of a new Lashkar strategy: sending new recruits from the Valley to Pakistan, with legal papers for "terror training."

Investigators said that Ahtesham Malik, one of the two arrested in Delhi, travelled to Pakistan last summer using his valid passport and trained for 40 days in "bomb-making and explosives". His is the third case where a young man from the Valley was chosen and sent to Pakistan using legal travel documents to receive training from Lashkar. The second man arrested is Ahtesham's cousin Tauseef Ahmad Pir who was picked up from Ranchi.

Incidentally, Ahtesham was arrested in 2007 in Sopore — for his alleged links with the local Lashkar unit — and then released. Subsequently, his family sent him to Jharkhand — Ahtesham's mother is from Hazaribagh. His father Farooq Ahmad Malik has built a house near his in-laws' residence in Hazaribagh, police said.

According to Sopore Superintendent of Police Imtiyaz Hussain Mir, Ahtesham re-surfaced on the security radar during an investigation into Aakash Badar, the Lashkar commander in the Valley who replaced Abdullah Unny — Unny was killed last year. Said SP Mir: "On January 10, we called Tauseef Ahmad Pir (then in Sopore) and one Muzamil Amin Dar for questioning. They are both from Badambagh in Sopore. We had information that both of them have links with Aakash Badar." Police also questioned Tauseef's cousin Zubair Malik.

While Badar was killed in an encounter, the band of cousins, Ahtesham, Tauseef and Zubair were put under constant "physical as well as technical surveillance,'' Sopore Superintendent of Police Imtiyaz Hussain Mir told The Indian Express. So on January 27, when Tauseef travelled to Hazaribagh — where he was enrolled in a "technical" course — J&K police alerted Central agencies, providing them with his address, phone number and other details. At that time, Ahtesham had been living in Ranchi for past three years.

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