BANGALORE: After being considered for decades as just a safe hideout for militants from Punjab, Kashmir and the North-east and also jihadi operatives, the State is now emerging as the new centre for terrorist activities.

The arrest of two Pakistani nationals, both Al-Badr operatives, by the police in Mysore on Friday has confirmed that not only the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) but also other terrorist outfits from across the border are gaining ground in the State.

According to sources in the State police, though they were aware of the presence of LeT operatives in the State, they had no clue about Al-Badr being active in Karnataka until the Mysore police caught Fahad and Mohammed Ali Hussain and uncovered the outfit's plot to target vital installations.

Until the attack on the Indian Institute of Science (IISc.) on December 28, 2005, the police had not realised that the LeT had set up many modules in the State, each assigned with specific acts of sabotage. Though the attack on the IISc. was a major terrorist strike in Karnataka, it was not the first. The first was the serial blasts in some churches in May-June 2000 by an organisation backed by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence.

The then little-known Deendar Anjuman, which is now a banned outfit, triggered explosions in churches at Wadi in Gulbarga district, Hubli and J.J. Nagar here, before the Bangalore police arrested key members of the group and exposed its Pakistani connections.

Designs foiled

Despite Karnataka, particularly Bangalore, being billed as a safe hideout for militants and terrorists, the police have, many times, caught such persons and foiled their diabolical designs.

Probably, the first incident of militants taking shelter in the State was in 1985 when two Punjabi extremists was traced in Ramanagaram in Bangalore Rural district. The Karnataka police arrested the two and seized sten guns from them, recollects a former chief of the State's Anti-Terrorist Squad.

LTTE activists Sivarasan and others who were involved in the assassination of the former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi took shelter in Bangalore in 1991.

Major operation

A major operation by the police against terrorists in Bangalore took place on September 29, 2002 when a suspected ISI agent, Imam Ali, and four of his accomplices were shot dead in a pre-dawn encounter.

Ali, who was allegedly associated with the Hizbul Mujahideen and Palani Baba's Al-Jihad and Al-Umma, was the prime accused in the 1993 blast at the RSS headquarters in Chennai, which claimed 14 lives.

In another important operation in November 2002, the police foiled an attempt by Tamil militants, with LTTE links, to kill some prominent Kannada activists and create unrest in Bangalore. The police arrested Vijay Murthy and Shiva Kumar from near the Banaswadi railway station and seized huge quantities of aluminium pipe bombs and grenades.

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