Karnataka: Major Terror Plot Busted

Just a few days after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's statement that India was not at any kind of war with Pakistan, police in Karnataka have arrested two suspected Pakistani militants who were trying to attack the Infosys campus. The arrests come after concrete intelligence reports that militants were planning to strike in the heart of India's Silicon Valley in Bangalore and other parts of Karnataka in order to destabilize India's IT Industry

RDX, a few AK-47 rifles, and a map of the sprawling 345 acre campus was recovered from them. Police Commissioner Praveen Sood confirmed the arrests. Top police officers have rushed to Mysore. A state-wide alert has been declared.

Karnataka Director General of Police BS Sial said, "From their passports and other documents in their possession, we have found they are linked to the Al-Badr terror group in Pakistan. While Fahad entered India early this February, Ali has been in the country over the last four years.” Initial interrogation revealed that Fahad, a chemical engineer with an MSc degree, hails from Karachi, while Ali is from Manesara in Sindh province. Sketches of the state secretariat Vidhan Soudha and its newly constructed annexe Vikasa Soudha, were also recovered from the militants

The arrests come a day before the inaugural of the latest edition of Bangalore IT.in, the annual tech mela that showcases the state as an IT investment hub.

According to B. Raman, a former Indian government official, the increased interest displayed by the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) in South India is an indicator of its interest in exploring the possibility of infiltrating into south India with the help of recruits from among the large number of south Indian Muslim migrants in Singapore and Indonesia.

The Bangladesh – ISI nexus has helped jihadi groups in Southeast Asia to form sleeper cells in southern India. All the recent developments underline the fact that terror has moved south as well. Bangalore and tech centers of Hyderabad and Chennai were now prime targets, as they were symbols of India's technological might and economic progress.