LeT has remained active outside Kashmir as well. Out of the 45 prominent terror attacks witnessed outside theatres of violence in J&K and the North East since August 14, 2000, the LeT was alleged to be involved in no less than 17 incidents, which resulted in at least 630 fatalities. Though the outfit had established linkages and operational capabilities across India much earlier, disclosures by the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) suggest that the February 13, 2010, Pune German Bakery blast (in which 17 people were killed and 60 others sustained injuries) was the first act of terror in which LeT coordinated with the Indian Mujahiddeen (IM). Maharashtra ATS Chief Rakesh Maria observed, "We proved in court that the LeT and IM joined hands for the first time to create terror in India.” IM’s parent group, the Student’s Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) had, however, been cooperating and coordinating with the LeT, among other Islamist terrorist formations in India, since the late 1990s.
The LeT has also continuously attempted to make its presence felt elsewhere in India’s immediate neighbourhood, though primarily, in the past, with the aim of targeting India. Of late, however, the group has emerged as a force multiplier to militant outfits operating in Afghanistan. It has established bases in the Afghan provinces of Kunar, Nuristan, Nangarhar, Wardak, Laghman, Paktia, Paktika, Khost, Kabul and Kandahar. The LeT has already been responsible for several attacks on Indian establishments, Coalition and Afghan Forces in Afghanistan. Indeed, on August 30, 2012, US Treasury Department designated eight LeT leaders— Sajid Mir, Abdullah Mujahid, Ahmed Yaqub, Hafiz Khalid Walid, Qari Muhammad Yaqoob Sheikh, Amir Hamza, Abdullah Muntazir and Talha Saeed— as terrorists, holding them accountable for attacks on Coalition and Afghan forces in Afghanistan as well as for the November 26, 2008, (26/11) Mumbai (Maharashtra, India) attacks. Again, on April 15, 2013, Coalition and Afghan Special Operations Forces arrested a “senior LeT leader” (name not disclosed) in the Andar District of Ghazni province. Sources indicated that he had "planned and participated in multiple attacks against Afghan and Coalition forces throughout Kunar, Kandahar and Ghazni provinces" and "was actively planning a high-profile attack at the time of his arrest."
In October 2010, while cautioning India about LeT, the then Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director Leon Panetta warned India about the increasing LeT presence in southern and eastern Afghanistan.
The LeT had also made inroads into Bangladesh and had primarily been using it as a launch pad for attacks against India. Several LeT cadres, who were operating in India and Pakistan and had taken shelter in Bangladesh, have been arrested by Bangladeshi enforcement agencies, but the degree of penetration the organization had established in Bangladesh was discovered by the April 8, 2010, arrest of the LeT organizer in Bangladesh, Mobashwer Shahid Mubin alias Yahia, a Pakistani national. Intelligence sources said Yahiya was recruiting local youths for LeT and carrying funds assigned by top LeT leaders for its activities in Bangladesh. Yahia reportedly also looked after the interests of different local and foreign militant organisations as an ISI agent. Significantly, the revelations by Pakistani American David Coleman Headley and Pakistani-Canadian Tahawwur Rana in the US had enabled Bangladeshi authorities to thwart a LeT design to attack the US Embassy and the Indian High Commission in the capital city of Dhaka in 2009. Meanwhile, stressing the outfit’s role in the current turmoil within Bangladesh, the country’s Home Minister Muhiuddin Khan Alamgir disclosed, on February 27, 2013, that the LeT remained active in Bangladesh and law enforcement agencies were tracking down their networks and keeping them under sharp security vigil. "It is the moral and legal obligation of the Government to uproot them totally,” he added further.
The LeT also has also established a strong presence in the Maldives. Various media reports suggest that the Pakistan-based Idara Khidmat-e-Khalq (IKK), one of the identities under which LeT operates, reached the Maldives in the wake of the December 2004 Tsunami under the guise of providing humanitarian aid to affected populations. In 2006, evidence emerged that Dhaka-based LeT ‘commander’ Faisal Haroon had explored plans to use the islands in Maldives as a logistical base. February 2010 reports, quoting the Indian Intelligence Bureau (IB), claimed that the LeT had nearly 1,000 operatives active in the Maldives. Indeed, disclosures by a Maldivian national, Asif Ibrahim, arrested in Kerala as far back as in April 2005 indicated that a shadow outfit, Jamaat-e-Muslimeen, was working as a cover for LeT and operations connecting Maldives and Kerala were being carried out in the name of this front. Further, Moosa Inas— who had been charged in the case relating to the Sultan Park, Male, blast of September 29, 2007, in which 12 foreign nationals were injured— had travelled in connection with the Male explosion to Thiruvananthapuram in the Indian State of Kerala in December 2005.
Nepal has, for long, been a critical base for LeT operatives targeting India. Reconfirming the group’s presence in that country, arrested LeT operative Abu Jundal, on June 30, 2012, revealed that his arms training was started in Nepal in 2004 by LeT terrorist Mohammed Aslam alias Aslam Kashmiri, a resident of Rajouri District in J&K. On July 6, 2012, Jundal, further told interrogators that Abu Hamza had entered India through Nepal and executed the December 28, 2005, Indian Institute of Science (IISc, Bangalore, Karnataka) attack and then escaped to Pakistan through the same porous route. Investigators also learnt that the Karnavati Express blast at Ahmadabad Railway Station (Gujarat) on February 19, 2006, failed due to insufficient training given to the LeT operatives in Nepal.
The LeT’s presence in countries across South Asia has been acknowledged by US diplomatic sources. A January 3, 2009, secret cable sent from Islamabad (disclosed by Wikileaks in its November 30, 2010, release) quoted the then U.S. Ambassador in Islamabad, Anne W. Patterson, stating,