A government school teacher, accused of working for the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) terror outfit, has been arrested for setting off two IED explosions in the Narwal transport yard here on 21 January that injured 9 persons.

Director General of Police Dilbag Singh told media persons here on Thursday that the teacher, Arif Mohammad, a resident of the Reasi district of Jammu, was working as a teacher since 2010.

During interrogation, he told the police that three IEDs were airdropped by his Pakistan-based handlers through a drone in December. He planted two of these in the transport yard at Narwal and was waiting for instructions from across the border for planting the third IED.

The DGP said four terrorists, who planted IEDs in the border district of Rajouri and Jammu, have been arrested since Wednesday. Another terror module consisting of five terrorists led by one Talib were arrested earlier and a cache of arms, ammunition, IEDs and grenades was recovered from them.

These modules were tasked by their Pakistani handlers to revive terrorism in the Jammu division that was many years ago declared free of terrorists. Two children were killed on 2 January in the Dangri village of Rajouri when an IED exploded outside a house where terrorists had a night earlier in an incident of targeted killing gunned down five persons.

They had also tossed grenades at the house of a former legislator in the Surankot town of Poonch.

These modules had also exploded IEDs in passenger buses and a crowded marketplace in Udhampur.

A very lethal perfume IED has for the first time been recovered from them. The IED in the shape of a perfume canister was designed to explode if anyone pressed the spray nozzle on its top. This type of IED had never been recovered before during the 32 years of terrorism in J&K, the DGP said.

The DGP reported that Arif told the police interrogators that he was working for LeT for the past three years after he was persuaded to join terrorism by his maternal uncle Qamir Din and Qasim, who had crossed over to Karachi in Pakistan and were handling terror strikes in J&K.

Arif planted the first IED at 7.30 pm while another was timed to explode a bit later and cause damage to security forces and police. He had also planted an IED last year in February in the Shastri Nagar colony of Jammu.

The DGP said Arif also confessed to have planted two sticky bombs near the diesel tank of a bus in Katra that killed four Vaishnodevi devotees and injured several others.

He said the J&K Police prepared dossiers against a dozen terror outfits that have been banned by the centre and 22 terrorists have been notified.