In what could be a pointer to the threat to India from ISIS being real, security agencies are on job ascertaining if the Gurdaspur attack was the handiwork of the radical outfit.
Sources said their apprehension stemmed from the fact that the attackers fired armour-piercing rounds and shouted jehadi slogans from the police station at Dina Nagar. This trend, they said, has not been noticed in the case of attacks by the lashkar-e-Tayyaba.
Moreover, telecommunication intercepts gathered by the agencies prior to the Gurdaspur attack also indicated that the ISIS was preparing to hit targets in India following which the Intelligence Bureau issued an alert just two days before the July 27 incident in Punjab. Another departure from past terror attacks is that no existing radical group has claimed responsibility for the Gurdaspur attack.
“The dissimilarities between past incidents and the latest attack in Gurdaspur indicates a new form of terror operation. The details are being collated and analysed to ascertain the group responsible for the attack in Punjab,” said a source in the security establishment, adding the development is a cause for worry.
The ISIS operatives are known to loudly cry out “Allah-hu-Akbar”, or “ad-Dawlah al-Islamiyah”, the Arabic name of the Salafi terror group. These cries were heard amid the firing from inside the police station, the sources said. The agencies are also verifying if the use of a war cry during an attack was part of Pakistan’s designs to deny a direct involvement in the incident.
Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has been seeking synergy between leT and IS even as the latter is fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan to establish its supremacy. Tahreek-eTaliban (Pakistani Taliban) has already accepted IS leadership.
In his statement in Parliament, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh has said the attackers came from Pakistan. Pakistan’s role is further corroborated by the fact that the armour-piercing rounds used by the attackers bore the marking of Chinese ordnance factory.
The China uses the number “71” as a marking on the back of the bullets manufactured by its firms. This indicates that the Pakistani agencies, which procure ammunition from China, could have supplied it to the module that carried out the attack in Gurdaspur, sources said.
Former Director General of Police of Punjab KPS Gill has been on record saying the Gurdaspur incident was a “visiting card sent by IS” that those who believe in violence ought to join such groups. Elaborating on his visiting card comment, Gill had said it implies that the group has support of people in this part of the country.
During the last few months, youth in Jammu & Kashmir have been openly raising IS flags and a number of young and educated Muslims from a number of States have been attracted to the extremist Salafi ideology and joining the group that has been recruiting such misguided young people from the social networking sites. The IS’ Twitter handle was also being operated from Bangalore by a cadre Mehdi Masroor Biswas.