After Wagah, Pakistan Taliban issues direct threat to Indian PM Modi

With a jihadist suicide blast taking place mere metres away from India’s border, forces are already on high alert, but what is even more worrying is that the attack has been followed up by a direct threat to PM Narendra Modi. Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan Jamaat Ahrar (TTP-JA) spokesperson ‘Ehsanullah Ehsan’ tweeted, “You are the killer of hundreds of Muslim… We w(il)l take the revenge of innocent people of Kashmir and Gujarat,” in reply to a tweet by PM Modi condemning what he called the ‘dastardly attack’ that killed 60 people and injured over 200. [caption id=“attachment_1788423” align=“alignnone” width=“620”]  Screenshot from Twitter[/caption] And India is not taking the threat lightly. According to this report in the Indian Express, “Modi has been briefed at least twice in the last fortnight on the growing threat from complex webs of transnational jihadist groups operating from Pakistan’s war-torn north-west and their new Indian affiliates, who give them the assets needed to execute their threats.” As mentioned by Firstpost columnist Rajeev Sharma, One such “gnawing worry for India is whether the recently launched India-specific al-Qaeda in Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) is in some way behind the Wagah attack.” The AQIS has not claimed responsibility for the attack, which has instead been claimed by three factions of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan. In fact it was Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan Jamaat Ahrar who also issued the threat to PM Modi. “AQIS, like a large number of other jihadist outfits, has a thriving base in Pakistan but is not known to have a network in India yet. Probably, the outfit plans to use its Pakistan base to hit at Indian interests”, explains Sharma. And this is certainly not the first time that the life of the Prime Minister has been threatened. According to this report in the Times of India in August, intelligence agencies had warned that his first Independence Day speech was under serious threat as “the PM could be attacked while on the move” by militant forces backed by Pakistan. The report went on to quote senior intelligence officers as saying that “Narendra Modi is at greater risk than any other prime minister in the past 20 years.” Regardless of this, Modi did not use the bulletproof shield that many of his predecessors, including Manmohan Singh used. The perception of Modi as a hardline Hindutva advocate who is also ‘anti-Muslim’ has meant that he is an easy target of hatred for Islamist terror groups who claim to protect the interests of Muslims everywhere. The Indian Prime Minister has also taken a very tough line on terror. ““There is no good terrorism or bad terrorism. Terrorism has no boundary or country,” Modi said in September, during his visit to the US. “There is a need to take the challenge of terrorism seriously. It’s sad that many countries could not earlier understand the ugly face of terrorism which is enemy of humanity,” he said. Meanwhile according to Rajeev Sharma, the Indian intelligence and security set-up is keeping its fingers crossed over the next possible moves of terror outfits. Their worst fear is that jihadists may be weaving an intricate terror web to come up with a big bang operation.