The Hindu : National : Slain men had links with Pakistan: police

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Mar 23, 2006

National

National

Slain men had links with Pakistan: police

Special Correspondent

AHMEDABAD: The Ahmedabad crime branch police have established the Pakistan link of at least two of the four suspected terrorists killed in a police encounter on the outskirts of the city last week.

The Ahmedabad crime branch police deputy commissioner, Manoj Shashidharan, said here on Wednesday that the police investigation had revealed that the terrorists had deliberately chosen a secluded locality beyond the labour-dominated Vatva to rent a house because the area fell within the Assembly constituency of the Gujarat Chief Minister, Narendra Modi.

He said the VIP assassination being one of their major tasks, they felt that it could be easier to target Mr. Modi in his own constituency where he was expected to move around with lax security. He said the investigation had also established that the initial assumption of the police that all of them were connected with the Pakistan-based Harkat-ul-Mujahideen was correct.

He said Azaan, a Pakistani national, was the chief commander of the Harkat in Kashmir while Kurkat Iqbal also hailed from Karachi. The other two were from Kashmir and their main mission was to "instigate" the Kashmiri students studying in some madrassas in Gujarat to join the terrorist oufits to destabilise India.

Mr. Shashidharan claimed that the mobile chips, compact discs, and other documents recovered from the slain terrorists had revealed that they had visited several cities and towns in the State.

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