NEW DELHI: Indian intelligence agencies have arrested one of the leaders of a domestic terror group blamed for a series of bombings in the nation’s cities, a top government official said Thursday.
Yasin Bhatkal was arrested Wednesday night on India’s eastern border with Nepal and he is being questioned by state police, Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde told reporters. He did not give other details.
Police say Bhatkal is one of the founding leaders of the Indian Mujahideen, a group that has been linked to the banned Pakistan-based Islamist rebel group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which has claimed responsibility for some previous terrorist attacks in India.
Ashok Karnik, a security expert, said Bhatkal’s arrest was a significant development as he could expose the terrorist network in the country.
The government outlawed the Indian Mujahideen in 2010 after it was suspected of involvement in an attack on a cafe popular with foreigners in the western Indian city of Pune in which 17 people died.
Indian authorities also have blamed the group for a bombing at a Bangalore cricket stadium that injured five people in 2010, a shooting and bombing attack outside a famous New Delhi mosque that injured two foreigners in 2010 and a dual bomb attack that killed 16 people outside a movie theater and a bus station in the southern city of Hyderabad in 2013.
Indian intelligence officials say the group arose out of Muslim Indian’s anger at Hindu extremists’ 1992 destruction of the 16th century Babri Mosque and the 2002 spasm of communal violence in the western state of Gujarat that killed more than 1,000 people, most of them Muslims.
Indian police believed they had eliminated the group after a series of raids in 2008, but subsequent attacks made it clear the Indian Mujahedeen had re-emerged.
Source: AP
I wonder why the Pakis don’t show sympathy with the family of the arrested. After all, this guy was on the payroll of the ISI.
But then again – if the bodies of your soldiers are lying in mass graves, unclaimed like dogs, in Kargil – why should this be different.
And the 1500 of your rats, pigs, dogs etc…didn’t have enough coffins to bury them in. You and your cowardly hindu banya arm live in terror what is coming for you soon. The expiry date on this fabricated land of filth and rape is approaching soon.
Mass graves in Kaskmir are of innocent Kashmiris victims of the most genocidal aninmist animals in the region. You must be high on cow cola again.
I’m sure you’re proud of a country that denied it’s soldiers either acceptance or burial.
But then again – one can’t really blame you. You’re a Paki, and like a snake, it is your nature to behave like scum