140 al-Qaida Terrorists Have Slipped into India: Assam Police

An unconfirmed intelligence input from Assam says that groups of al-Qaida terrorists have slipped into India, said media reports.

In the wake of intelligence, police has been urged to look out for groups of terrorists from the al-Qaida trying to sneak into the country from the western coast, said reports.

Despite intelligence input being unconfirmed, authorities don’t want to take risks leaving anything to chance, especially because the Lashkar and other Pakistan-based terrorist groups sound determined to launch huge attacks on India.

A couple of inputs from Assam last week said that nearly 140 al-Qaida terrorists might have infiltrated into India from the western coast, using Sri Lankan fishing boats, said reports.

However, Navy sources rubbished the ‘alarmist’ input, citing that it was not possible for such a huge number of people to reach Indian shores in foreign fishing vessels, reports said.

Repeating their warning, the Assam police on the other hand gave more details on al-Qaida plot, insisting that the terrorists had landed along the Gujarat-Maharashtra coast and dispersed to various parts of India, said reports.

According to these inputs, about 30 of them were said to have moved to Rajasthan, 14 to UP, 15-20 to Hyderabad and 12 to Maharashtra, reports said.

Of the remaining, 40 went to southern states and five to the Delhi/Haryana area, said reports.

Assam police input said that a few of them may have been killed in J&K in encounters in recent days, reports said.

Quoting sources reports said that security establishment was doubtful of the claims saying that there was no corroboration from any other sources, said reports.

However, the home ministry had issued detailed alerts last Friday to the affected states, not wanting to take any chances. This is the second time in the past two weeks when the Centre has issued serious terror warnings to several states.

(Based on media reports)