Bangalore, Sept 29: The al Mujahiddin militants killed early this morning had plotted to assassinate Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani and Union human resources minister, Murli Manohar Joshi, a top Tamil Nadu Police official disclosed today.
Ali, who was killed in an encounter in the joint operation by Karnataka and Tamil Nadu Police early today, along with four others, had made a vain attempt to kill Joshi this July in Ahmedabad, DIG (Coimbatore), Ashitosh Shukla told reporters here. However, Ali could not execute his plot. The DIG said Advani was also on Ali`s hit list.
Ali, an expert in bomb making, had been trained by the Hizbul-Mujahideen in Jammu and Kashmir in 1991 and later, by ISI in Bangladesh in operating sophisticated weapons, including AK-47s.
Shukla said the Tamil Nadu Police, which missed the gang by a whisker at Thiruvananthapuram on May 10, kept track of its movements.
He said though Ali had planned to visit Allahabad after his abortive assassination mission, he did not do so, but engaged himself in planning to set off bomb blasts in temples in Tamil Nadu to create communal disturbances.
Bureau Report