B’lore link exposes intelligence chinks

NEW DELHI: Perturbed by the possibility of a Bangalore connection to the Glasgow attack, intelligence agencies are conducting their own probe to establish whether international terror modules have tentacles in south India.

This is a possibility the agencies did not consider till date in the firm belief that terrorist activities in India are driven by outfits based in Pakistan and Bangladesh, like Lashkar-e-Toiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed and Harkat-ul-Ansar.

Investigators are now looking to see whether India, particularly south India, has become part of a wider international terror network through non-resident Indian (NRI) recruits like the three Bangaloreans who have emerged as suspects in the Glasgow attack.

The three Indians who have been linked to the terror attacks are Kafeel Ahmed, 27, the alleged driver of the blazing car at Glasgow airport, who is currently fighting for his life in hospital with 90% burns. His brother Sabeel Ahmed, 26, was arrested in Liverpool, north-west England, on June 30. Sabeel worked as a doctor at Halton Hospital in Runcorn, Cheshire.

The third Indian under suspicion is Mohammed Haneef, 27, who was arrested at Brisbane airport in eastern Australia on July 2 as he was about to fly to India. A cousin of the Ahmed brothers, Haneef also worked as a doctor at Halton Hospital till 2005.

A senior intelligence officer in Delhi said they are probing the activities and local connections of the two Ahmed brothers and Haneef through extensive questioning of their family members. They are also looking for money trails that would reveal a larger international involvement.

Significantly, the flurry of investigations by intelligence agencies seems to be part of a damage control exercise by the government, which is deeply concerned by the emergence of an Indian connection in an international terrorist incident.

So far, the UK government has not officially requested India for assistance or information about the detained doctors. This has created the impression here that the UK police do not have substantial evidence as yet to implicate the doctors. It explains why Prime Minister Manmohan Singh warned on Thursday against jumping to ``hasty conclusions’’.

A senior official said that the ongoing investigations in Bangalore are precautionary in nature, partly to put Indian intelligence on a firm footing with the authorities in UK and partly to shore up its own flanks for better understanding and penetration of terrorist networks here.

What is interesting is that the Bangalore police are not directly involved in the investigations. They are being handled by the intelligence agencies, which makes it an unofficial probe. It will be come official only if they unearth something solid or if the UK government makes a demarche for assistance.

The Bangalore connection is particularly worrying because since 2005, there has been a spurt in terrorist activities in south India, with one of the most sensational attacks taking place at the Bangalore-based campus of the Indian Institute of Science on December 28 that year.

In addition, Bangalore being India’s IT capital, the city has been consistently high on intelligence radar as a possible target.

Intelligence agencies have found two alarming trends in south India. Over the past couple of years, they have rounded up more than two dozen suspects who went to Pakistan for training in camps in Baluchistan. And they have picked up sympathisers recently returned from the Gulf where they had gone to work.

In the case of the Ahmed brothers, intelligence officers are probing for a link to the Gulf. In this connection, they are extensively questioning their parents who worked for a long time in hospitals in Iran and other countries in the Middle East.