India has for the first time lodged a strong protest with Pakistan and given concrete evidence proving that Indian Mujahideen, which has been responsible for a series of bomb blasts across the country, was nothing but a front of dreaded terror outfit Lashkar-e-Tayyaba.
New Delhi has also categorically told Islamabad that LeT was using the Pakistani soil to give training and other logistical support to the IM. The issue was discussed at length during the recently concluded home secretary-level talk in Islamabad.
Pakistan’s intelligence agency, ISI, has for long been trying to project that IM was India’s internal problem of “home grown terror” as most of its members were Indians. The basic idea of ISI, intelligence sources said, behind floating IM was to show that terrorism was India’s own domestic issue and that Pakistan has nothing to do with it.
But Indian intelligence and security agencies have now busted that myth giving a complete list during the secretary-level talks to Pakistan of LeT’s terror camps in Pakistan where IM cadre, comprising mostly Indian recruits, were being trained. The details of this elaborate dossier accessed by this newspaper reveals that Lashkar was using at least five camps in Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir (PoK) to train IM terrorists in use of making Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) and training of arms and ammunitions.
These important camps, which have been on the radar of Indian agencies, are: Bait-ul- Mujahideen at Shawai Nalla; Al Massada, Ibn Taymiyya, Abdullah Bin Masood, Masker Al Aqsa. All these training camps are in Muzaffarabad in PoK. The dossier also states that most of these men are “launched across the border” mostly through the Maskai-e-Ummalkura which is basically a tent camp used for transit close to the Indian border.
The details provided by the Indian side also goes on to reveal that the top Lashkar commanders like Abu Muzammil and Abu Sama, are actively involved in training the IM terrorist. These two Lashkar operatives often cross over into India also to supervise Lashkar operations in the Kashmir Valley, particularly in North Kashmir.
In addition, India also reiterated that the two founders of IM, Riaz and Iqbal Bhatkal, continue to live in Karachi under the ISI’s protection.
“Information was also provided to Pakistan as to how Indian youth from various parts of the country are taken to Pakistan through Nepal and Bangladesh for training. This is the first time that India has taken up the IM issue with Pakistan so strongly,” a senior home ministry official said.
The current chief of IM in India, Yasin Bhatkal, who is still on the run, is also suspected to have been trained by the LeT at these training centres in Muzaffarabad.