ENCOUNTER SPOT: Authorities inspect the site of the shootout between suspected Islamic militants and police in Nagpur on Thursday.

NAGPUR/NEW DELHI: Three terrorists were shot dead on Thursday morning during an abortive attempt to storm the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh headquarters in Nagpur — the latest in escalating terror strikes across India that have brought enormous pressure to bear on the India-Pakistan détente process.

Police said the terrorists attempted to drive a white Ambassador car, fitted with a red command-light, towards the building shortly before dawn. When guards at the perimeter of the three-level security cordon flagged down the car, its driver attempted to crash through the barriers. RSS chief K.S. Sudarshan and other top functionaries were not present in the building at the time of the attack.

Attackers Pakistanis?

Intelligence sources in New Delhi said all three intruders were thought to be Pakistani nationals, although no detail of their identities was available. "We had reason to believe that an operation of this kind was being planned and asked the Nagpur police to be prepared," a senior official said.

Officials noted that the attack came just a day after Union Home Secretary V.K. Duggal and his Pakistani counterpart Syed Kamal Shah met in Islamabad to discuss New Delhi's concerns over continued cross-border terrorism.

Investigators believe that either the Lashkar-e-Taiba or the Jaish-e-Mohammad was most likely to have carried out the attack. Both organisations have demonstrated the capability to execute suicide-squad attacks in the recent past. In July last, Jaish operatives attempted to storm the makeshift temple at the Babri Masjid site in Ayodhya using tactics similar to that adopted in Nagpur. An Ambassador car rigged to resemble an official vehicle was also used in the 2001 Jaish attack on Parliament House.

Deep networks

Of the two outfits, the Lashkar appears to have developed deeper networks in Maharashtra — a fact demonstrated by the massive recoveries of explosives last month from a terror cell it set up in the Aurangabad area. Such activities are not new. In June 2004, for example, the Pune-based Lashkar operative Javed Sheikh and his girlfriend Ishrat Jehan Raza launched an operation seeking to assassinate the former Union Home Minister, L.K. Advani, and bomb the Bombay Stock Exchange.

Maharashtra-based Lashkar cells have from the outset sought to eliminate politicians of the Hindu right wing. As early as November 2000, police arrested three Pakistani nationals who had set up a covert cell at Mumbra, near Mumbai, with intent to assassinate Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray.

Disturbing evidence has emerged that such recruitment is gathering scale. On Wednesday, The Hindu broke the news of training of several persons from the Maharashtra and Gujarat cadre in Jammu and Kashmir by the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen on behalf of the Lashkar. One recruit, Mohammad Irfan of Kolhapur, was shot dead in an encounter on the outskirts of Tral, south of Srinagar, on Tuesday.

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