New Delhi, January 28
Intelligence inputs that Pakistan-based terror outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba has acquired as many as 50 paragliders for potential use to launch suicide attacks prompting a security alert in India ahead of the Republic Day appears to be a blooper.
The Union Home Ministry has begun a discreet probe into the basis for the inputs with official sources today saying it has now emerged that only three paragliders were procured from China. According to intelligence inputs ahead of R-Day, LeT was believed to have procured 50 such equipments from Europe sending security personnel into a tizzy.
Official sources said the inquiry would focus on how the quantum of acquisition was apparently inflated irrespective of their source.
Senior Home Ministry officials claimed that they had been briefed by officials of the security agencies, who washed their hands off about the possibility of paragliders being used to carry out terror strikes, sources said. Agencies, while assessing the input, had opined that carrying out an attack using paragliders would require rigorous training and a high level of expertise.
The intelligence input had warned that the innocuous sporting gear could become a lethal weapon in the hands of banned LeT, which carried out the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack. The paraglider, a specially designed parachute attached to the body of a person, gets a lift when air from the opposite direction slams it. It could be launched from an elevated surface like a hillock or skyscraper. — PTI
