Action movie buffs Rajesh Chandhoke and Nikhilesh Arora had never before heard the sound of gunfire in real life. On the eve of Diwali, at about 7 p.m. on November 3, the two businessmen took the elevator down to the parking lot in the basement of the Ansal Plaza shopping complex in south Delhi, only to hear the whiz of a bullet for the first time. As they headed towards Chandhoke's black Ford Ikon with Arora clutching the Barbie dolls he had bought for his daughter, the shots froze them. At first they assumed it to be the staccato burst of crackers, but when they spotted a man firing from a revolver and taking cover behind a pillar, they knew something serious was going on.

HARD EVIDENCE: A forensic expert takes pictures at the site	GORY END: One of the two terrorists killed by the police on November 3

Two Pakistani nationals belonging to the banned Lashkar-e-Toiba, which is backed by the ISI of Pakistan, were engaged in a gun battle with a Delhi Police team. The policemen led by Special Cell ACP Rajbir Singh were firing from behind cars. The two militants initially hid behind the giant columns but later took cover behind the cars parked in the lot. Fifteen minutes later, the terrorists lay dead.

Soon, an army of mediapeople, including the ubiquitous TV crews, descended on the scene, frenetically asking questions. Some of the questions raised were controversial (see box), bu0t the police response was measured. "If we hadn't been able to intercept the militants in time, anything could have happened," says Joint Commissioner of Police Neeraj Kumar. "They opened fire first, leaving us no option but to retaliate."

The encounter averted a major tragedy: the terrorists probably planned to massacre Diwali shoppers at one of Delhi's elite shopping malls which is normally crowded on weekends. On Diwali eve, it was choc-a-bloc. Had the two militants managed to sneak up the elevator, they could have fired indiscriminately in the amphitheatre at the mall's centre or within the shopping plaza itself. The evidence suggests they were prepared: an airbag they carried contained an AK-56 assault rifle, a bandolier and 60 rounds of ammunition.

The following morning Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani announced that there were definite intelligence inputs to suggest the two terrorists had been dispatched by their masters in Pakistan to create communal tension in India. Well-placed sources say the Intelligence Bureau (IB) had been tracking the movements of the two militants-identified as Ejaz Ahmed of Gujranwala town and Abu Anas of Kasoor, both in the Punjab province of Pakistan-over the past two months. Intercepts suggest the two were initially based in Anantnag, then visited contacts in Mumbai, Lucknow and some places in western Uttar Pradesh. The car used for the mission was stolen from Lucknow, and though it had a Delhi licence plate (DL 8 CB 3241), the number etched on the window pane confirmed it was registered in Uttar Pradesh.

Only last month Advani had asserted that the IB and various state police forces had jointly busted over 200 ISI modules in the country since January 1998 (India Today, "Terror's Hidden Face", November 11). The handset recovered from one of the terrorists revealed that calls were made to a number in Gujranwala (0092-43-1241742) in Pakistan. On the three occasions that India Today dialled this number, three men who identified themselves as Abid, Khalid and Babar took the calls and said Ahmed was unavailable.

Another number in the cellular call list (0092-30-7951662) belongs to Azam Cheema alias Baba, the let's "launching commander" for "rest of India outside Jammu and Kashmir". Cheema is No. 3 in the let's hierarchy, and operates from the outfit's office in Bahawalpur on the highway to Multan. In the past 10 years, Cheema has trained and sent scores of fidayeen to India. He also provides logistical support.

As with every Special Cell operation that is followed by a witchhunt prompted by the media and civil rights organisations, several questions were raised this time also. They challenged not only claims that the militants were from Pakistan, but also whether the encounter itself was genuine. Several eyewitnesses that India Today spoke to confirmed that the shootout went on for nearly 20 minutes, but one witness, H. Krishna, a doctor, created an avoidable controversy. The press quoted him as saying he had seen the two militants being dragged out of a car and being shot; he also claimed the police later stopped him from speaking to the media. Based on his claims and buttressed by the press reports, Rajya Sabha member Kuldip Nayar filed a petition before the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) which, in turn, promptly issued a notice to the Delhi Police brass to explain their action and also provide security to Krishna.

When contacted, the surgeon from south Delhi, curiously enough, had these words to offer, "I will not confirm nor deny whether I was at the spot. But definitely the men killed were genuine terrorists. I have not been harassed by the police in any way. Neither did I ask for any protection from the NHRC." Nayar himself says he took the matter up with the NHRC only to ascertain whether what was reported in the press about Krishna was correct or not.

Krishna's U-turn isn't surprising. The man who had accused the police of cold-blooded killing, has a couple of cases registered against him at Agra and Tappal, near Aligarh, for attempt to murder and culpable homicide amounting to murder. "My cases don't matter in such a case," Krishna counters. When the Special Cell's investigators questioned him last week, he made an equally startling, if unrelated, "disclosure" that most of the women on flight IC 814 hijacked to Kandahar in December 1999 had been "raped repeatedly for a week by the hijackers".

It is unlikely that Krishna's volte-face and disclosures will be taken seriously by the prosecution or the NHRC. What however needs to be taken seriously are the various intelligence reports indicating that many ISI operatives are lying in wait to strike. "The enemy's idea is to cause communal tension, disrupt normal life and bleed the state machinery continuously," says a senior intelligence officer. That is why, human-rights watchdogs notwithstanding, security forces like to settle scores the Ansal Plaza way.