BSF Arrests Potential Jihadi along Indo-Pak Border
The BSF has apprehended in Punjab a teenaged potential suicide bomber who was on a reconnaissance mission at the Attari international border to facilitate incursion of a squad of seven suicide bombers, including three women, said reports citing BSF officials.
BSF DIG Mohd Aquil was quoted as saying by ‘The Times of India’ that two Kissan guards of BSF noticed on Wednesday suspicious movement of a person inside Indian territory who was later found hiding beneath a bush.
Indian currency note worth Rs 10 and a chemistry book was recovered from his possession, he was quoted as saying.
It was yet to find out to which militant outfit the arrested person, identified as Nauman Arshad, 18, belonged, said Aquil. “He is young and hard to crack,” said the DIG, the report said.
Aquil said that his language suggested that he could either be from the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) or from Teherik-e-Taliban Pakistan.
Sustained interrogation revealed that a Pakistan-based jihadi outfit had dropped him near the India-Pakistan international border to carry out a recce of the border area and to collect information on movement of the BSF along the border fence to facilitate infiltration of the seven suicide bombers to execute disruptive activities in India, said report.
Quil said that Arshad, a student of Comprehensive School in Gujjarpura, Lahore had undergone four day training at a terrorist camp in Peshawar in June 2009. He was trained in the use of weapons and explosives and given information on suicide missions.
After the training the boy was sent back to Lahore but members from the terrorist group kept an eye on his movement and once again in October took him to Okara district of Pakistan for extensive training in terrorist camps. Incidentally, India’s most hated terrorist who was captured during the 26/11 terror attacks, Mohammad Ajmal Kasab, also was also trained in Okara, report said.
The arrest of the Pakistani youth comes less than a week after rockets were fired into India from across the Punjab border for the third time in recent months, the earlier ones being fired in July and September last year.
