The five terrorists who attacked the Ram temple complex in Ayodhya were mainly foreigners, and at least three of them may have belonged to Afghanistan or Sudan, police sources said Saturday.
The other two, it is being assumed after the interrogation of a driver who drove them to the complex, may have been Pakistanis or Indians or a mixture of both.
Initially, it was assumed that the attackers, all of who were killed by the security forces, were from Jammu and Kashmir or Kashmiris from Pakistan.
A police team from Jammu and Kashmir invited by the Uttar Pradesh Police helped to figure out that the language spoken by the three foreign terrorists was Pushtu or Arabic.
Kashmir police officials initially played Kashmiri language tapes and asked Rehan, the driver, if that was the language he had heard them speaking.
He replied in the negative. The police then played some tapes in Arabic and Pushtu and Rehan said they sounded like the language he had heard.
"From the facts gathered from Rehan's statement, it is presumed that three out of the five terrorists were either (from Afghanistan or Sudan) while two were Indians or Pakistanis," a source said.
{{/usCountry}}"From the facts gathered from Rehan's statement, it is presumed that three out of the five terrorists were either (from Afghanistan or Sudan) while two were Indians or Pakistanis," a source said.
{{/usCountry}}While Rehan could easily follow the Hindustani (a mixture or Urdu and Hindi) spoken by two of the militants, the conversation carried out by the other three was unintelligible to him.
He also confirmed that the two who spoke Hindustani appeared to quite fluent in the language spoken by the other three.