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The Special Task Force of the Uttar Pradesh police gunned down a Pakistani militant of the Lashkar-e-Tayiba on Tuesday following a tip-off from the two who were arrested in Lucknow on Monday evening.
Police sources said the encounter took place near Ayodhya and that the militant was an area commander of the Lashkar.
On Monday evening, the police had arrested two Lashkar-e-Tayiba militants from the Lucknow cantonment, which houses the headquarters of the army's Central Command.
According to UP Director General of Police R K Pandit, "The operation has exposed a major conspiracy being hatched by Pakistani and Kashmiri militants to create disturbances on Independence Day in Ayodhya as well as in the Lucknow cantonment."
"The slain Pakistani militant's name is Imran and he was an area commander of the Pakistan-funded militant outfit Lashkar-e-Tayiba. The two arrested youth - Altaf Hussain and Saleem - confirmed his identity," he added.
Altaf is a permanent resident of a village in Ambedkar Nagar district while Saleem hails from Azamgarh district (both in eastern UP).
Last year, blasts had been engineered on the eve of Independence Day in Ayodhya and the industrial hub of Kanpur, about 80 kms from Lucknow.
Earlier, two persons having links with Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence had been arrested in Kanpur, a city increasingly being seen as a 'major ISI target' in the country's most populous state.
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