India: Rebels eyed strike on BJP leaders

NEW DELHI, March 31 (UPI) -- India says suspected Islamist militants arrested last week confessed to planning an attack on two top Hindu nationalist leaders.

"Those interrogated have said that training camps and militant cadres were being organized to target some top leaders ... while they are being evasive about names, they said their targets were leaders associated with the Babri Masjid case and the recent Gujarat riots," said Anshuman Yadav, superintendent of police in Indore, the capital of Madhya Pradesh state where the arrests occurred.

The alleged members of the banned Students Islamic Movement of India were arrested last Thursday.

From the descriptions of the targets, police said the officials being considered for assassination are L.K. Advani and Narendra Modi.

Advani played a key role in the destruction of a historic mosque in the city of Ayodhya in 1992. Modi is chief minister of Gujarat state and was blamed for the mass killings of Muslims in 2002.