Indian police claim actions avoid “spectacular” attack
Police killed two suspected members of the outlawed Jaish-e-Mohammed group in a park in New Delhi late on Saturday, hours after explosives were seized in two separate raids and three people arrested.
“The exact target would have been disclosed to them by Jaish headquarters a short time before the actual strike,” Joint Commissioner Niraj Kumar told reporters. “It would have been something spectacular like VIPs, symbols of national importance like the India Gate and Red Fort, something like that.”
The raids in the capital came after security forces in Indian-controlled Kashmir said they had killed Jaish-e-Mohammed’s head of Indian operations, Ghazi Baba. He was suspected of carrying out an attack on India’s Parliament in December 2001 that brought India and Pakistan close to war.
Jaish-e-Mohammed is one of the most feared militant groups in India’s Jammu-Kashmir state. It is among about a dozen groups fighting security forces to separate Kashmir from Indian control or to merge with Pakistan, India’s neighbour and rival.
Security officials often identify Islamic militants from documents found on their bodies, like letters, photographs and identity cards.
However, there was no way to independently verify the identity of the men killed and arrested on Saturday night. Kumar said the arrested men had confessed to their identities and told police the license plate number of their accomplices, who were later killed in an ambush.
