Two of India’s most prestigious boarding schools — Doon in Dehradun and Woodstock in Mussoorie — and the National Defence College (NDC) in Delhi could be targeted by the Lashkar-e-Toiba, it has emerged from intelligence shared by the FBI following the interrogation of David Coleman Headley and Tahawwur Hussain Rana.

Schoolmates Headley, an American, and Rana, a Pakistan-born Canadian, were arrested by the FBI in Chicago last month on charges of planning major terrorist attacks in India and Denmark.

The Uttarkahand government is learnt to have received information on October 27 about a possible attack on the schools. The state police have since deployed plainclothesmen on the campuses and stationed Quick Reaction Teams of 15-odd men with sophisticated weaponry close by, and are reportedly running background checks on school employees.

The police declined to divulge details of the threat and their response.

But an officer said “there were some unconfirmed and unverified inputs”. “We are not taking them lightly. We are in touch with school authorities,” he said.

The reference to the NDC was made in a conversation Headley and Rana had on September 7, which the FBI recorded. “Headley and Rana discussed Denmark and other targets, including the National Defence College in India... Rana, in fact, used the English word ‘target’ in this discussion,” the FBI informed a Chicago court.

(With PTI)