The arrested militant has revealed that he planned to blow up the Kaiga nuclear power plant in Karwar and the Almatti dam in Northern Karnataka.
BANGALORE: A Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) operative arrested by the Karnataka police has revealed that he planned to blow up the Kaiga nuclear power plant in Karwar and the Almatti dam in Northern Karnataka. The 35-year old Habeeb was nabbed on Sunday at Bagalkot in North Karnataka while investigating the shootout at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) last month.
Bagalkot is where the dam on the river Krishna is located, and police recovered explosives and incriminating documents from him. But his links with the IISc attack, which left M C Puri, a former IIT professor dead and four others injured is yet to be established. The police are yet to trace the gunman who sprayed bullets and a sketch using eyewitness accounts has been released.
Abdul Rehman, the LeT operative, who was nabbed on January 1 for the December 28 attack, revealed about Habeeb during interrogations. Both of them had hatched the plan to attack the nuclear plant, the Almatti dam and another dam on river Sharavathy near the Jog falls in Shimoga, police said.
The Kaiga nuclear plant is near to INS Kadamba, the largest naval base in Asia of the Indian Navy. Rehman and Habeeb, with aliases Mehaboob Ibrahim and Chopdar met in Saudi Arabia, where they were employed between 1993 and 2001. Habeeb is a fabrication mechanic and a native of Bagalkot. “During our interrogation Abdul Rehman has confessed to be involved in raising funds and recruiting operatives who are trained in explosives in Pakistan and Bangladesh,” Singh said. “A few persons from Karnataka got trained in these two countries,” he added.
The aim of the militants was to destroy communal harmony by targeting places of national and economic importance, the police said. Police had released a sketch of the assailant based on eyewitness accounts.
“Habeeb’s role is under investigation. Even if he is not connected with the IISc case, it comes under the case relating to waging war against India,” Singh said. He said Rehman had been raising funds, recruiting people and organising their training in Bangladesh and Pakistan.
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