How Haryana police goofed up IB's plan to nab terrorists

The Intelligence Bureau’s meticulously planned operation to nab members of a combined module of Babbar Khalsa International (BKI) and Lashkar-e-Tayyeba (LeT) in Ambala could have been a sterling success had the Haryana police not goofed up.

Ruing the missed opportunity to bust the module, a top official source told DNA that the Haryana police posted one of its special branch officers to keep an eye on the RDX-laden Indica. This proved disastrous for the operation.

“Our men posted close by discovered that the inspector was a familiar face at Ambala railway station where the car was parked. The inspector was in Mufti (plainclothes) but the vendors and hawkers recognised him and offered him a chair to sit, even brought water, snacks and tea for him. This was enough to blow his cover and compromise the operation,” said the source.

Almost certainly, the BKI and LeT conduits must have been lurking around and observing the drama. The IB therefore decided it would be better to call off the operation and recover the explosives before the terrorists decided to blow them up.

Security agencies, however, were not discounting the possibility that there could be more than one consignment of explosives and so have put police of various states on high alert.