Hyd terror plotter Bilal killed in Pak

ISI is said to have bumped him off in Karachi

NEW DELHI: Shahid Bilal, one of India’s most wanted terrorists, has been shot dead in Karachi, say intelligence officials.

The officials said Bilal, the mastermind behind the blasts at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, and the twin explosions in Hyderabad, was killed #on August 30. It was from Karachi that Bilal was supervising all cross-border terror acts, the officials said.

Central intelligence outfits and the Hyderabad police had already identified Bilal, a school dropout, as the man behind two other terror attacks in Hyderabad — explosions at the Mecca Masjid and the Special Task Force headquarters (see box).

Bilal’s mysterious killing, just five days after the twin bombings in Hyderabad, has baffled India’s intelligence agencies. Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) could #have bumped off Bilal after they realised he was very much on Indian intel’s radar screen, say people familiar with the situation. But they do not rule out the possibility of Bilal being killed by rivals within the terror network.

Indian intelligence officials believe Bilal and his aide were riding a motorbike when they were shot on August 30 near Gulberg Chowrangi Water Pump, in Karachi. The killers followed the duo on a motorbike before shooting them.

The Pakistan police have confirmed the deaths of two local youths at the same spot. Major Ziauddin, inspector-general of the Sindh police, said the Karachi police records showed two people riding a motorbike were shot dead by masked attackers. One of the victims had eight bullet wounds while the other had four.

Bilal was probably killed by the ISI after Bangladeshi authorities picked up Abu Hamza, a Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI) member, who was a key link in the Bilal network. Hamza’s arrest, a few days after the twin blasts in Hyderabad, could have alerted them about India’s investigations.

They were worried Bilal’s links with the ISI would be exposed, said Indian intelligence officials#. HuJI has deep links with terror groups like the Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed and enjoys ISI’s patronage, according to the officials.

The rivalry theory is not ruled out, though. Differences had cropped up between the HuJI grouping in Karachi and its contacts in Bangladesh. It’s likely that Bilal, who was coordinating the Karachi group’s activities, was killed by one of the contacts, said the officials.