A special squad of the Lashker-e-Tayiba is attempting to scuttle the upcoming roundtable conference on Kashmir and create terror by engineering massacres in the state, police said.

"A recently infiltrated special squad of LeT militants have engineered massacres to scuttle the peace process and the roundtable conference and create terror in Doda," district SSP P R Manhas told PTI.

Doda killings: Jammu shuts downs

The task of organising massacres was given to the group of LeT militants who crossed over from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir recently after staying there for three to four years, he said.

These militants, trained in camps in PoK, had returned to Doda and other places three weeks ago, Manhas said. The LeT has been blamed for the killing of 32 Hindus in two separate incidents in Doda and Udhampur districts over the past two days.

Besides these massacres, the LeT special squad headed by an area commander codenamed Abu Bilal was involved in the killing of two security guards and five others, mostly police informers, security officials said.

The squad also carried out several grenade attacks in Doda, which had been a 'calm place' for the past three years, they said.

The special squad of 20 LeT cadres had been deployed by the Pakistan-based United Jehad Council along with 15 Hizbul Mujahideen militants, in different areas of Doda, Udhampur and Rajouri districts to create terror, the security officials said.

A meeting of the UJC's coordination committee headed by Shamsher Khan alias Ali Bhai was also held at Gool in Udhampur district to give a fillip to militancy in the region, they said.

Commanders of the LeT, Hizbul Mujahideen, Harkat-ul-Jehadi Islami and Harkat-ul-Mujahideen participated in this meet, they added. While the LeT squad has split up into three to four modules to operate in Doda, Bhaderwah and Basantgarh belts, the Hizbul group is active in Gool, Basantgarh and Darhal in Udhampur district, they said.

A LeT module led by area commander Abu Akram operating in Bhaderwah and Inderwal belts had attacked police stations and lobbed grenades during recent elections, the officials said.

"These recently infiltrated militants were instrumental in the killing of 47 people, including seven security personnel, over three weeks in Darhal, Gool and Doda belts of Jammu and Kashmir [Images]," an official said.

The officials said these developments clearly indicated the militants wanted to scuttle the roundtable conference on Kashmir to be chaired at Srinagar [Images] on May 25 by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh [Images].