LeT terror plot foiled in Delhi –ToI – 1.3.12

2 Youths Held With IED

New Delhi: This report would have been on the front page in the same position, but might have easily told a very different story – one of a bloody bomb attack in one of the most crowded markets of the city. For, police detectives, after painstaking investigation 
involving at least three agencies, swooped down on a south Delhi colony to pick up two young men in the nick of time before they were setting off to allegedly plant a deadly bomb in Old Delhi’s Chandni Chowk on Wednesday. 
    The target of the bombing plot – said to have been hatched by Pakistan-based terror outfit, Lashkar-e-Taiba – was the cloth market in Chandni Chowk. As hundreds of yards of cloth are stacked in the market, and piles of it sold on pavements, an explosion was almost certain to start a big fire . The possible toll can only be conjectured. Simultaneously, an attack was planned in Srinagar which now seems to have been aborted. 
RARE SUCCESS 
ARRESTED | Ahtesham and Shafaqat, 2 alleged Lashkar-e-Taiba operatives, as they were assembling an IED explosive in Tughlaqabad late Tuesday evening 
THE PLOT | To allegedly carry out a blast on Wednesday at Chandni Chowk’s cloth market 
(in picture), which would have resulted in a big fire, maximizing casualties 
HOW IT WAS UNCOVERED | Intelligence Bureau intercepted encrypted message about an impending attack. Coordinated with 3 police forces — Delhi, Jharkhand and Jammu & Kashmir — to foil attack ‘LeT tapping educated youth in India’ 
    This is a rare story where all this mayhem was prevented. Three police forces – Delhi, Jharkhand and Jammu & Kashmir – coordinated with the Intelligence Bureau (IB) to uncover the plot. 
    The big breakthrough on Tuesday came when the agencies cracked an encrypted message that had been intercepted. The message spoke of an impending attack. 
    Working at a feverish pace, and enlisting the support of the three state police forces, security detectives reached Tughlakabad on late Tuesday evening to find the two alleged attackers, Ahtesham and Shafaqat, assembling an IED explosive. 
    The detectives are said to have found large quantities of explosives, five mobile phones, two memory sticks, detonators, passports and certain literature from the rented flat of Ahtesham and Shafaqat.