Delhi police on Sunday claimed to have prevented a Mumbai-type terrorist strike in the Indian capital, just hours after the alleged mastermind of the sensational attack on India's parliament two years ago was reported killed in Kashmir.
Two suspected members of the banned Pakistani-based radical Islamic group Jaish-e-Mohammed were picked up in neighboring Uttar Pradesh state, two others were shot dead in Delhi, and three Kashmiris were caught while transporting hand grenades in apple crates.
A bag containing nitroglycerine sticks, apparently abandoned by a courier, was also recovered from the New Delhi railway station.
Delhi, on high alert since last Monday's taxi bombs killed 50 people in Mumbai, is notorious for its telephone cross-connections.
According to the police, a businessman overheard two men discussing plans for doing "something bigger than Mumbai" and tipped off officers.
The success in averting a fresh attack followed reports on Saturday of the killing in Srinagar of the highly elusive Ghazi Baba, or Victorious One, the nom de guerre for the 42-year-old radical Islamist and Pakistani Shahbaz Khan, who led the Indian operations of Jaish-e-Mohammed.
The Jaish Sunday denied that Ghazi Baba had been killed, describing the claim as "a bundle of lies." A spokesman said three activists had been killed in the Srinagar shooting, but not the militant leader.
Ghazi Baba almost triggered a war between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan by organizing a suicide strike on India's parliament in December 2001.
Born near Bahawalpur, Pakistan, he is said to have been schooled by the Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in the US-sponsored crusade against the Soviet army.
But after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, he shifted to the Pakistan-backed struggle by Kashmiri Muslims against Indian rule.
Allegedly, he was part of the group of armed Pakistanis who in December 1999 hijacked an Indian Airlines plane from Nepal to the then Taliban-ruled Kandahar in Afghanistan, releasing the passengers only after India freed the radical Pakistani preacher Maulana Masood Azhar.
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