Lashkar-e-Taiba Al Alami claims responsibility for Pune blast;
security agencies sceptical.
Laskhar-e-Taiba Al Alami, a little-known outfit, has claimed responsibility for Saturday’s bomb blast in Pune’s German Bakery.
According to The Hindu, a person, identifying himself as Abu Jindal, called the newspaper’s office in Islamabad and said his group carried out the attack as India refused to discuss Kashmir during the forthcoming talks with Pakistan in Delhi. The foreign secretaries of the countries are meeting in the capital on February 25.
The claim is intriguing as it runs contrary to the stated position of jehadi groups on Kashmir. Laskhar-e-Taiba Al Alami has never figured on the Indian intelligence radar. But if the claim has any credibility, it could mean it is the international arm of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) — Al Alami means international literally. But the caller said they were a splinter group of the LeT, and had split from the parent organisation because it was listening to Pakistani intelligence agency ISI.
Abu Jindal, according to the newspaper, claimed to be the
spokesman of the outfit. He also warned against India’s alliance
with the US.
“Joh bhi America ka ittehad hoga, hum uskey khilaf jang ladengey, chahey woh India ho ya Pakistan (we will wage war against any ally of America, whether it is India or Pakistan),” the newspaper quoted him as saying.
The telephone number that showed up on the caller identity carried an area code common to the Waziristan tribal area and Bannu, the adjoining district in the North-West Frontier Province. When the paper’s Islamabad correspondent tried calling back the number, a recorded voice message said the number was temporarily not in use.
The newspaper said the caller sounded like an educated boy in his late teens or early 20s. He said he was calling from Miramshah in North Waziristan and declined to divulge the name of the group’s leader. Asked how the group had carried out the Pune attack, he said it had its “sources” in India and had activated them to carry out the attack.
Sources in the Indian security establishment said on the face of it the caller was confused about issues. But they said they wouldn’t rule out any possibility, given the growing terrorist presence in Waziristan.
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