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By Krittivas Mukherjee

NEW DELHI, Jan 25 (Reuters) - Police killed two suspected Pakistani militants after a car chase and gun battle on the outskirts of New Delhi, which came amid heightened tension with India's neighbour after the Mumbai attacks late last year.

Police said that they shot dead the two men in Noida, a city a few miles from New Delhi, before dawn on Sunday, and they may have been Pakistanis. "We recovered AK-47 rifles and grenades and some documents, including a Pakistani passport," Navin Arora, a senior police officer in Noida, told reporters.

The attack came before India celebrates its Republic Day on Monday and as the country is on high alert after the Mumbai attacks in November, when Pakistani militants killed 179 people in coordinated attacks in India's financial capital.

Brij Lal, a senior police officer, said the recovery of a passport indicated the militants killed on Sunday were from Pakistan, but added it was too early to say which militant group they belonged to.

One policemen was injured in the gun battle.

Police said the militants were trying to enter New Delhi. Thousands of armed police are patrolling the capital ahead of the national holiday.

The Mumbai attacks have raised tensions between India and Pakistan, which have fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947.

The Indian government says Pakistan is failing to crack down on militants and says state agencies within the country must have been involved in the Mumbai attacks.

Every year, leftist and separatist rebels in India call for the boycott of India's Republic Day and other holidays and often carry out attacks on security forces and government buildings to protest India's founding as a republic. (Reporting by Krittivas Mukherjee; Editing by Alistair Scrutton and Jerry Norton)

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