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By Andy McCue, 9 March 2005 16:30

NEWS Terror threats against offshore IT and BPO operations in India are "credible" and likely to increase as militant groups turn their attention from high-profile government politicians to businesses, according to security experts.

The assessment follows the discovery by police in New Delhi of diaries belonging to members of the Pakistan-based Kashmiri separatist movement Lashkar-e-Taiba showing scouting missions to survey some of Bangalore's IT and call centre operations as potential targets.

The diaries were discovered after police shot and killed three members of the group and captured two others.

Ashish Sonal, ex-Indian special forces and country manager of risk management consultants Hill & Associates in India, told silicon.com: "Based on the assessment and fact finding done by us, we assess the report regarding the terror threat to IT companies in Bangalore to be credible."

Attacks on firms in Bangalore would be aimed at damaging India's booming offshore IT and call centre industry and the western multinational corporations who use them.

Sonal said not only are businesses seen as softer targets than high-profile Indian politicians but there has also been a clear mandate from the political support infrastructure in Pakistan for the Kashmiri and Islamic terrorist groups operating in India not to target politicians, mainly because the last time it happened in 1991 it almost led to full-scale war between the two countries.

Terrorist attacks on businesses are also not without precedent in India. A series of co-ordinated bomb blasts on office buildings in 1992 killed over 250 people in the business district of Mumbai (formerly Bombay).

Sonal acknowledged no attacks have taken place but said evidence shows businesses will increasingly become targets.

"Even though no high profile attacks have taken place there has been a trend of late where extremist organisations in India, including the Kashmiri separatists, are increasingly realising the value of targeting business enterprises and in our assessment this trend is likely to get stronger," he said.