The missing ‘terror’ link

BANGALORE: Some 500 Pakistani nationals visited India in 1999 to watch a one-day cricket match in Bangalore. But 48 of them stayed back without any trace.

“We don't know what happened to them despite investigations,” said Karnataka home minister MP Prakash. Two years back, 16 Pakistanis came to the Indian silicon valley to watch another cricket match.

And only six of them returned home. It is a known fact among security agencies that Pakistanis routinely visit India on “visitor visas” and then disappear.

But in the wake of the alleged involvement of two Indian doctors in the Glasgow terror attack, there has been a fresh concern over the steady disappearance of Pakistanis in the country and their alleged links with terror outfits.

It is being feared that many of them, who stay back, try to recruit Indians for jehadi campaigns in and outside the country.

According to the last official estimate presented by the minister of state for home, Sriprakash Jaiswal,  last year, “over 2,300” Pakistanis, who had visited different parts of India at different points of time, had vanished “as on November 30, 2005.” The figure, however, related to those who legally entered India and then did the disappearing act.

According to Intelligence officials, it is impossible to keep tab on each Pakistani visitor owing to their limited resources and myriad diversions in gathering political intelligence and providing VIP security.

The threat perception is more in case of Mumbai, said KP Raghuvanshi, chief of the Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS). He added that  the city is huge and it is a base for a large foreign population. “We’ve instructed all house-owners to furnish details of foreign tenants,” he said.