Lashkar-e-Taiba (Urdu: لشکرطیبہ [ˈləʃkər eː ˈt̪ɛːjbaː]; literally Army of the Good, translated as Army of the Righteous, or Army of the Pure) – also transliterated as Lashkar-i-Tayyaba, Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, Lashkar-i-Taiba, Lashkar Taiba or LeT – is one of the largest and most active militant Islamist terrorist organizations in South Asia, operating mainly from Pakistan.

It was founded by Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, Abdullah Yusuf Azzam and Zafar Iqbal in Afghanistan. With its headquarters based in Muridke, near Lahore in Punjab province of Pakistan, the group operates several training camps in Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

Lashkar-e-Taiba has attacked civilian and military targets in India, most notably the 2001 Indian Parliament attack and the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Its stated objective is to introduce an Islamic state in South Asia and to "liberate" Muslims residing in Indian Kashmir. The organization is banned as a terrorist organization by India, Pakistan, the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union,Russia and Australia. Some experts such as former French investigating magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguière and New America Foundation president Steve Coll believe that Pakistan's main intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), continues to give LeT intelligence help and protection.

Narendra Damodardas Modi (Gujarati: નરેન્દ્ર મોદી; born 17 September 1950) is the current Chief Minister of the Indian state of Gujarat. Born in a middle class family in Vadnagar, he was the third of six children born to Damodardas Mulchand Modi and his wife Heeraben. He has been a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) since childhood also having interest in politics since adolescence. He holds a master's degree in political science. In 1998, he was chosen by L. K. Advani, the leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), to direct the election campaign in Gujarat as well as Himachal Pradesh.

He became Chief Minister of Gujarat in October 2001, promoted to the office at a time when his predecessor Keshubhai Patel had resigned, following the defeat of BJP in the by-elections. His tenure as chief minister of Gujarat began on 7 October 2001, and he is the longest serving Chief Minister of the state of Gujarat. In July 2007 he became the longest serving Chief Minister in Gujarat's history when he had been in power for 2063 days continuously. He was elected again for a third term on 23 December 2007 in the state elections, which he had cast as a "referendum on his rule".

Dawood Ibrahim (born Sheikh Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar), also known as Dawood Ebrahim, and Sheikh Dawood Hassan, is the head of the Indian organized crime syndicate D-Company in Mumbai. He is currently on the wanted list of Interpol for organised crime and counterfeiting. He was No. 4 on the Forbes' World's Top 10 most dreaded criminals list of 2008.

Dawood Ibrahim is accused of heading a vast and sprawling illegal empire in and against India and Indians. After the 1993 Bombay bombings, which Ibrahim allegedly organized and financed, he became India's most wanted man. According to the United States, Ibrahim maintained close links with al-Qaeda's Osama Bin Laden. As a consequence, the United States declared Dawood Ibrahim a "global terrorist" in 2003 and pursued the matter before the United Nations in an attempt to freeze his assets around the world and crack down on his operations. The Bush administration has since imposed several sanctions on Ibrahim and his associates. Indian and Russian intelligence agencies have pointed out Ibrahim's possible involvement in several other terror attacks, including the November 2008 Mumbai attacks, as per Interpol. Along with the Pakistan Administered Kashmir, the issue of extradition of Dawood Ibrahim is one of the major hurdles in normalizing Indo-Pakistani relations.

The Ishrat Jahan encounter case refers to the encounter killing of four people claimed to be Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) operatives by the Ahmedabad Police Crime Branch in 2004. The victims included Ishrat Jahan Raza, a 19-year old college girl from Mumbai, and three men: Pranesh Pillai (alias Javed Gulam Sheikh), Amjad Ali Rana and Zeeshan Johar. Multiple judicial inquiries by Indian authorities, in 2009 and 2011, concluded that the encounter was fake, and the victims were killed in police custody.

The encounter was carried out by a team led by DIG D.G. Vanjara, who was later jailed for his involvement in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter. The police alleged that Ishrat and her associates were LeT operatives involved in a plot to assassinate the then Chief Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi. Later, an investigation was launched into the allegations that Ishrat was killed in a fake encounter. In 2004, a Lahore-based publication affiliated with LeT claimed that Ishrat and her companions were operatives, but in 2007, Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the political wing of the LeT retracted the statement as a "journalistic mistake", offering apology to Ishrat's family. After a long investigation, in 2009, an Ahmedabad Metropolitan court ruled that the encounter was staged. The decision was challenged by the Gujarat State government, and taken to the High Court. In 2010, some media outlets reported that the convicted terrorist David Headley had implicated Ishrat in terrorist activities in a statement given to the National Investigation Agency (NIA). However, the NIA called these reports as "baseless". After further investigation, in 2011, a Special Investigation Team (SIT) told the Gujarat High Court that the encounter was not genuine, and the victims were killed prior to the date of the staged encounter.