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— By Sheikh Mushtaq

SRINAGAR, India (Reuters) - Indian Kashmir's police chief said on Thursday security forces had arrested a Pakistani militant they believed planned and helped carry out the massacre of 24 Hindus in a remote village last month.

Ashok Kumar Suri said the man claimed the March 23 attack was in retaliation for the killing of hundreds of Muslims in religious clashes in the western Indian state of Gujarat last year and that his group aimed to wage a holy war in India.

"He has operated and planned it," Suri told a news conference in Srinagar, summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir.

Suspected Muslim militants, fighting New Delhi's rule in the disputed region, shot dead 24 people, including 11 women and two children, in Nadimarg village, provoking outrage across India.

Suri said the militant, who was present during the news conference but told by the police chief not to speak, was a district commander of the outlawed Pakistan-based rebel group, Lashkar-e-Taiba.

India blamed Lashkar for the Nadimarg attack and accused Islamabad of stoking violence in the Kashmir Valley after the attack. Pakistan condemned the massacre and denied Indian charges it was behind it.

The religious clashes in volatile Gujarat last year were triggered after a Muslim mob torched a train carrying Hindu activists, burning alive 59.

The announcement of the arrest came as a powerful bomb blast damaged the gates of Kashmir's famous Mughal Gardens, once one of the main tourist attractions on the banks of Srinagar's Dal Lake.

The Nadimarg massacre is seen as a setback for Jammu and Kashmir's new government -- elected late last year -- which has pledged to bring back thousands of Hindus who fled the Kashmir Valley after a revolt erupted in 1989.

A dozen Hindus remaining in Nadimarg said they were too scared to stay there despite increased security and assurances of their safety by officials who initially tried to stop the migration.

"This Chinar (tree), this village will always remind me of my mom, dad and (sister) Pritma. I cannot live here," cried Vicky Kumar Bhat, 21, pointing toward the tree under which his family was forced to line up and shot from close range.

The government has deployed at least 150 policemen to guard the remaining Hindus but the barbed-wire fencing and sandbag bunkers in the village among sprawling apple orchards and huge trees did not stop two Hindu families from fleeing earlier.

"Leaving my home, my motherland will be another tragedy. But we will have to migrate," said Nisha Koul, a student, who lost her father, brother and grandfather in the killings.

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