Intelligence inputs have warned that the international terror group Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) has directed its cadres in India to use the Gujarat riots as a “recruitment trigger point” and the issue of release of the accused and convicts in the Bilkis Bano gang-rape case as the “strike trigger point” to disrupt the forthcoming Assembly elections in Gujarat.
Intelligence assessments also suggest that incidents of rioting and knife attacks against members of the Right-wing organisations by youth radicalised by the ISKP handlers are likely to occur in the coming weeks.
The ISKP is a front of the dreaded terror group ISIS. ISKP’s Indian unit is referred to as the Islamic State Wilayah Hind (ISHP).
The official magazine of ISHP the ‘Voice of Hind’ has in the past underscored that the terrorist cadres should discover vulnerabilities of the road and Railway networks in the country. The terror propaganda magazine outlined in detail the possibility of attacks on the Indian road and Railways networks.
The magazine further advised the ‘Ansar al-Khilafah’ (terrorists) to either perpetrate the strikes as lone wolf attacks or in batches after selecting the targets with diligent reconnoitering, pursuing and ambushing.
It has also advised ultras to target individuals of worth, pilgrims or anything which caters to the jihadist agenda.
To hit the rail network, it has suggested blowing up tracks on the weakest point of the network moments before the scheduled arrival of trains at a railway station, besides hitting luxury/business trains carrying the elite.
The inputs have come just weeks after the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) had detained a suicide bomber of the ISIS, who was plotting a terrorist attack against an Indian leader for avenging the alleged insult to Prophet Muhammad.
The FSB is the top Intelligence agency of Russia that had said that the arrested terrorist underwent special training in a Central Asian country for carrying out the planned hit in India. The radical is of Uzbek origin.