NEW DELHI, March 19: Pakistan-based Islamist militant groups are pursuing a new strategy to strike at religious targets in India and spark sectarian strife to hurt New Delhi, India’s national security adviser said on Sunday. M.K. Narayanan’s comments came less than two weeks after suspected Islamist militants set off two bombs in the Indian city of Varanasi, one of Hinduism’s holiest pilgrimage centres, killing 15 people and wounding dozens.

“I think it’s a new shape being given to the whole thing. It’s not based on territory, it’s not based on ideology, it’s just an attempt to create a divide between the majority and minority communities,” Mr Narayanan told Indian TV channel CNN-IBN in an interview.

He said New Delhi had information that the militant groups planned to target religious places and sensitive political and economic centres.

“Almost all of them are ... going across, sometimes Bangkok is a port from which they go and sometimes it is West Asia,” he said, referring to the Indian recruits. “But there is always, by and large, a Pakistani connection.”—Reuters