Jammu, December 16
The Central and state police and intelligence agencies have achieved a breakthrough in their investigations in the terrorist strike on Parliament House by arresting two Kashmiri militants, Afzal and Shaukat, at Parimpora, on the outskirts of Srinagar. Both of them were whisked away by a team of Delhi police and senior officials of the IB by a special plane to Delhi yesterday.

Afzal and Shaukat had gone into hiding after the terrorist strike and had travelled by a truck from Delhi which was intercepted by the Special Operations Group of the state police on the Srinagar-Baramulla road near Parimpora. A laptop, a cellphone and Rs 10 lakh were recovered from them. The laptop had been fed with day to day developments which led the police to confirm that Afzal was the kingpin of the terrorist strike on the Parliament House.

Senior state government functionaries said weeks before December 13 Afzal had been with the five Pakistani militants, belonging to Jaish-e-Mohammad, while the plan of attacking Parliament House was finalised in Kashmir. And Afzal and Shaukat had spent days with these five terrorists in Delhi making them familiar with the routes leading to Parliament House.

The government functionaries said the arrest of several youths in the Kashmir Valley, in Delhi and other towns of the country had given some definite clues to the investigating agencies in identifying those who were involved in the attack. The state police had earlier arrested five youths in Srinagar and three of them bore the name of Ashiq Husain. One belonged to Baramulla, a computer-knowing man, another a cable operator from Sopore and third Ashiq Hussain was from Pulwama. The police got some hints from their interrogation but they had no involvement in the attack on Parliament House.

Reports said out of the five militants, who stormed Parliament on Thursday, three had entered into Kashmir in recent weeks and two had been in Srinagar for the past several months.