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BID FOILED: Police have recovered a Pakistani passport from one of the two arrested suspects. MAPPING TERROR: The shootout took place near the Vijaynagar Extension in Mysore.
Mysore: Mysore woke up on Friday to the disturbing news of two Pakistani terrorists being arrested on late Thursday night after a shootout.
The Karnataka Police claim the two terrorists - Ali Hussain and Mohammad Fahad - were planning to attack vital installations in the city and in the state capital Bangalore.
Says DGP Karnataka B S Sial, "With the arrest of these two persons, we have been able to prevent a major disaster and terror strike in Bangalore and in the other parts of the state including Mysore."
The police say the terrorists were staying in a house in Mysore's Rajeev Nagar. The house had apparently been under surveillance for the past few months
Says Mysore Police Commissioner Praveen Sood, "We have got some literature which confirms that these men belong to the Al Badr group, which is a banned organisation under the Unlawful Activity Act. They were part of the recci group and had been sent here to survey major installations."
FOILED TERROR BID
Police said the two were planning an attack on the Vidhan Soudha in Bangalore, which houses the state legislature. The suspects have been identified as Mohammed Fayeed, from Manshera, Pakistan, and Ali Hussain from Karachi. Police have found Pakistani passport on one of the two arrested. A gunfight took place near the city’s Vijayanagar Extension, where a police team intercepted the suspects traveling on two-wheeler. The militants fired from an AK-47 rifle at police who returned the fire before getting arresting them around midnight, Mysore Police Commissioner Pravin Sood said. Two bullets fired by the militants hit a police vehicle and two constables and a militant suffered minor injuries. The police have recovered the AK-47 rifle, a pistol and some ammunition from the militants, he said. "We had some information about them and intercepted them". Sketches of the state secretariat and its newly constructed annexe 'Vikasa Soudha', a satellite phone with numbers linked to Jammu and Kashmir and Pakistan, a laptop and some commonly available chemicals used for making improvised explosive devices (IEDs) were recovered from the militants, Sial said. Police Commissioner Pravin Sood said a satellite phone which they were using to communicate with Pakistan and Kashmir was also seized, besides "some incriminating" material.
Till now Mysore had been off the terror radar, even though South India has been targetted by terrorists on previous occasions. With the advent of foreign capital and IT companies in the city, it looks like the people of Mysore will now have to live with this clear and present danger.
Terrorism in this tourist city is a wake up call to powers that be that perhaps hatred is closer than we realise and terror can come when we least expect it. This time fortunately terror has not won.
SOUTH INDIA TERROR TIMELINE In India, terror attacks have been confined to north India, having hardly traveled down south. However, with the attack on Indian Institute of Science in December, investigating agencies say more and more sleeper cells are being activated and India's silicon valley, Bangalore, is the first target of terrorists. In February 1998 serial bomb blasts within a 12 km radius in Coimbatore killed 46 people - 35 men, 10 women and one child. Over 200 were injured in the 13 bombs that exploded in 11 places. Just three days after this, bomb blasts rocked Coimbatore again this time killing 4 people and on the same day, the police defused a car bomb planted at BJP President L K Advani's meeting ground. In October this year a blast in Hyderabad at the high-security Begumpet area in the special task force office killed 2 people. It was suspected to be the first incident of suicide bombing in the state. Sleuths say that there is a possibility that these modules are not just going to carry out operations in south Indian cities only, but will also plan hits across the country.
This theory rang true when police teams visited Karnataka in search of terrorists after the blasts in Delhi just before Diwali last year.
Two members of the Islamic militant group Al-Badr have been arrested in Mysore after a gun-battle with police early Friday morning.

Police said that they were planning a "devastating" terrorist attack in the state by attacking Vidhan Soudha in Bangalore, which houses the state secretariat and legislative assembly.

According to Karnataka DGP B S Sial, they were intercepted by police when they were riding a bike early morning and apprehended after a shootout. The gunfight took place near the city's Vijaynagar extension. Two police constables and one of the militants sustained minor injuries. 

Sial said, an AK-47 rifle, a foreign made pistol, a cell phone, detonators, a digital camera and passports were also recovered from them.

The two Pakistani militants have been identified as Mohd Ali Hussain from Karachi and Mohd Fahad from Manshera. The men were hiding in Mysore for the last two or three months. 

Husain is thought to have crossed the Line of Control in June this year through the Rajwar forests in northern Kashmir.  He hid himself in the Harwan area until he received instructions to travel to Mysore.

Al-Badr operatives have financed  Rs. 300,000 to the Srinagar cell led by an operative code named "Imran".  Hussain has been linked to this cell.  Investigators believe that Hussain was one of several Al-Badr operatives despatched to execute terror strikes outside Jammu and Kashmir. 

Al-Badr was allegedly formed by the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in June 1998.