DHAKA: Decrypted communications between Indian Mujahideen (IM) and al-Qaida and testimony from suspects have triggered alarm among intelligence officials in New Delhi: the groups appear to be working together to launch major attacks in the region.

The officials said that plots they had uncovered included the kidnapping of foreigners and turning India into a ‘Syria and Iraq where violence is continuously happening’, reports The Times of India.

Allegiances between Islamist militant groups can be murky and fleeting, and providing concrete proof of operational ties is notoriously difficult.

But Indian security agencies said evidence they had gathered pointed to growing ties between al-Qaida and IM, a home-grown movement hitherto known for low-level attacks on local targets using relatively crude weapons like pressure cooker bombs.

Weeks after al-Qaida announced the formation of a South Asia wing to strike across the subcontinent, agencies said they had discovered IM members were training with al-Qaida and other groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan for major attacks.

That increases the risk of a more dangerous form of militancy in the world’s biggest democracy, which has been largely spared the kind of violence that regularly rocks its neighbor Pakistan and, beyond it, Afghanistan.

BDST: 1155 HRS, NOV 06, 2014