Nashik was on LeT terror target list

The interrogation of the two Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) operatives arrested last Tuesday in connection with the Pune German Bakery blast has revealed that they were planning a similar attack in Nashik.

According to sources in the anti-terrorism squad (ATS), Mirza Himayat Baig and Shaikh Lal Baba Mohammad Hussain Farid, alias Bilal, had also chosen as targets the Maharashtra Police Academy, the police commissionerate and the Deolali Military Camp in Nashik.

“The planning was at an advance stage as Bilal had already carried out a recce of these places. Baig was getting the whole planning organised, and was to prepare a team that could execute the attacks,” an ATS official said. “We have also recovered photographs of these places from the duo’s possession. The attacks, we believe, would have been similar to that carried out on the Lahore military camp.”

The official said that Bilal had moved to Nashik in May, and assumed a new identity. He took the names Amin Parekh and Sutar Iqbal. “He worked in three companies in the Satpur Industrial Estate as a lathe operator,” the official said.

ATS officials believe that the RDX recovered from the duo was to be used to carry out the Nashik attacks. “Apart from four detonators, the police seized 700 gram of RDX from Bilal in Nashik and 1.2kg from Baig at a cyber café,” an ATS official said, adding that the targets were decided upon by LeT handlers in Pakistan. The information was then passed on to terrorists Faiyaz Kagzi and Zabiuddin Ansari, besides Baig.

Another crucial bit of information gathered by the ATS from the duo is that a decision was taken by senior LeT operatives that the attackers would work in small teams. “In the last week of January, terrorists Riyaz, Iqbal and Yasin, besides Baig, decided that since after a police crackdown on Indian Mujahideen members a large number of operatives were nabbed, it was necessary to function in small groups,” the official said.