Mumbai, Sept. 8: The key accused in the Pune German Bakery blast has made a startling revelation to his interrogators that the tourist destination of Colombo has now emerged as the training hub of the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba.

Mirza Himayat Baig, 29, the conspirator and co-planter of the bomb placed at Pune’s German Bakery has confirmed that he received his terror training in Colombo.

“Baig had received training in terror activities in Colombo. We will try to get more information on the same from him,” said ATS chief, Mr Rakesh Maria.

According to a source, another reason for the terror outfit choosing Colombo as the location for providing training could be because of its image as a tourist destination among Indians. “There are a lot of Indian tourists in Colombo and such visits are not under the scanner. If an Indian visits Pakistan or Bangladesh, his movements are under the scanner by the intelligence agencies. Moreover, they were of the opinion that the radar would be on LTTE operatives who might still be lying low, so Islamic terrorists had a good chance of going unnoticed,” he said.

Baig received the Daura-e-aam and Daura-e-khaas trainings in Colombo. The two trainings in terror activities are the same that were given to Ajmal Aamir Kasab in Pakistan.

“The LeT must have worked on the assumption that after LTTE chief, V. Prabhakaran, was killed by the Sri Lankan Army on May 19 last year, the alertness of the police must have naturally come down after being in a state of war for almost 30 years. The LeT must have thought they could take advantage of this,” said a source.

The police is now getting the location details of where the training camp was held in Colombo from Baig.