New Delhi: Recovering from the dreaded terrorist attack, Sri Lanka was cautioned several times by India for a possible attack. According to sources Sri Lanka did not take the warnings in a serious manner.
India cautioned that the island country could develop into an operational zone for Lashkar-e-Taiba and like-minded Jihadi groups. Indian agencies also pointed to National Thawheed Jamaat (NTJ) having a number of associates and followers in Pakistan.
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The continued efforts by LeT to build foundation in Sri Lanka over the past one-and-a-half decade, as part of a broader design to ‘encircle’ India, may have helped the growth of Islamic groups such as NTJ, now named by Sri Lanka to be behind Easter Sunday's serial blasts. As per Indian agencies, NTJ has been linked with Al Qaeda that has been radicalizing and employing young Sri Lankans for group Jihad.
According to the reports, Indian security agencies had shared "specific intelligence" about a plot by the Jihadi group on April 4.
Amarnath Amarasingam, a specialist in Sri Lankan extremism at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a counter-terrorism research group in London said, “The target selection and attack type make me very sceptical that this was carried out by a local group without any outside support.”