New Delhi: The Special Cell of the Delhi Police has dismantled a major terror module plotting high-value attacks across the national capital and Mumbai, triggering a high alert in Delhi and its neighbouring areas.
Nine persons, including both Indian residents from Delhi and Mumbai as well as foreign nationals, have been arrested. Investigators have established that the group possesses operational links to the Dawood Ibrahim syndicate and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
The security agencies had been tracking the network for several months. Acting on actionable intelligence, the Special Cell executed a coordinated bust, seizing a huge cache of automatic firearms, hand grenades and sophisticated ammunition from the possession of the accused.

According to officials, the module had undertaken extensive reconnaissance of vital infrastructure, with their primary targets including nuclear installations, airports, railway stations and heavily crowded public spaces.


Shift to 'homegrown' covert operations

An Intelligence Bureau (IB) official stated that the ISI has increasingly been utilising the D-Company underworld syndicate to build localised, "homegrown" sleeper cells within India.

This strategy follows a major shift in India’s defense doctrine post-Operation Sindoor, under which New Delhi declared that any Pakistan-backed terror strike on Indian soil would be treated directly as an act of war rather than a routine cross-border infiltration.

Security analysts note that this doctrinal shift forced handlers across the border to rely on homegrown networks to maintain a factor of plausible deniability.


Vigilance escalated across the capital

The breakthrough comes just weeks after the IB issued specific warnings regarding potential lone-wolf shooting plots, vehicle-mounted Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), and suicide strikes in Delhi NCR.

Furthermore, this operation follows a similar major crackdown a few months prior, when intelligence agencies successfully dismantled a related module operating out of Faridabad that was planning strikes on identical targets.

District police units have been ordered to maintain maximum vigilance and work in close coordination with central intelligence agencies to preempt any further security threats.

IANS