Author: J Dey
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: October 2, 2001
Introduction: Reopens the IC-814
hijack probe file and says some of those involved in Terror Tuesday
may have had roots in Mumbai
The plot to hijack the Indian Airlines
flight IC 814 was hatched by the Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence
(ISI) sometime in 1997 after Maulana Masood fell into the hands of
Indian authorities. Mohammed Asif alias Babloo Mohajir was the first
to be roped in for the job while he was employed in Saudi Arabia.
Asif, an immigrant worker, was selected because the ISI thought he
knew Mumbai and had the potential to become the core of a local network
of operatives.
According to sources in the Mumbai
Police, the first blueprint of the plan was laid out in Bangladesh
after which members of the team slipped into the country in pairs
through Siliguri and Malda in West Bengal.
''Mumbai was chosen as a centre
because it was easy for the operatives to melt in the over-populated
metropolis. Nobody would notice them as strangers,'' says Sub-inspector
Daya Nayak, a member of the squad that nabbed the suspects.
Another reason of choosing
Mumbai as a base was the mushrooming ISD/STD business which made
communication easy and detection even more difficult. Asif, though
brother of a wealthy juice shop owner at Crawford Market, built an
obscure base in the Behrambaug Zopadpatti (slums) at Jogeshari in
downtown Mumbai. He was soon joined by Sayyed Mohammed Hussain, Mohammed
Parvez alias Jaffar Soda and Haji Mohammed Iqbal alias Mohammed Rafiq.
The four men lived in the shanty
town and posed as imitation jewellery dealers. And slowly, they became
part of the community. Parvez even sold fruits and married the neighbour's
daughter to avoid suspicion. ''They attended weddings and funerals
in the neighbourhood so that nobody suspected them to be Pakistani
agents,''says Inspector Pradeep Sharma, another member of the squad.
Even as the ISI operatives were
mingling in, they worked to develop a network which could help them
obtain driving licences. Driving school owner Mehboob Ismail, Ismail
Chaiwalla and Abdul Aziz Mulla were the next targets. The driving
licences helped them to obtain Indian passports. In a way, it also
served as a dry run for the potential hijackers.
The support team's 18-month stint
in the city made them even more confident that it was time for the
hijackers to slip in and obtain Indian driving licences and passports.
This was made possible with the help of Seven Travels, a small-time
agent located near Mumbai Central railways station. The five hijackers
Ibrahim Azhar, Sunny Ahmed Kazi, Shahid Aktar Sayed, Mistri Zahur
Ibrahim and Rajesh Gopal Verma entered India by the land route from
Nepal sometime in September 1999. And it was not long before they
were in possession of the Indian travel documents issued at Mumbai;
the core team set up by Asif had perfected the procedure.
The five hijackers took residence
at Golden Soil, a middle-class neighbourhood in Jogeshwari. They
took the precaution of moving at odd hours, so much so that even
their neighbours did not notice them.
Having got its papers in order,
the team went to New Delhi enroute to Kathmandu, where they lay in
wait for several weeks for further instructions. The team was soon
joined by two more ISI operatives - Sayyed Abbas Hussain Zahidi alias
Bashi alias Raju and Mohammed Rasid.
In Kathmandu, they had managed to
find a local recruit - Gopal Mann alias Yusuf Nepal. Mann agreed
to smuggle arms into the aircraft in return for a secure life in
Pakistan, and immediately after flight IC-814 was hijacked, Mann,
his wife and two children were moved to the Golden Soil flat in Mumbai.
Mann was to be nabbed by the police from this address.
The ISI operatives had promised
Mann and his family a decent life in Pakistan before was nabbed by
Mumbai police.
The Mumbai police were tipped off
on the possible involvement of Mumbai-based ISI operatives in the
hijack four days after the incident. Erstwhile Joint Commissioner
of Police (crime) D Sivanandhan ordered Inspector Pradeep Sharma
and SI Daya Nayak to track the suspects in the Jogeshwari slum. Sayyed
Hussain, Mohammed Parvez, Haji Iqbal, Mohammed Asif were apprehended
with a large cache of arms, including TNT rocket launchers and AK-47
assault rifles.
Information extracted from them
led to raids on the Golden Soil residential complex resulting in
the arrests of Sayyed Zahidi, Mohammed Zahidi, Yusuf Nepali and his
family members on December 29, 1999. After that, one clue led to
another and the pieces of the jigsaw began to fall in place. Three
ISD booth operators - Rafique Sheikh, Javed Sheikh and Mustaffa Sheikh
- were arrested on January 7. The next day, the police raided Seven
Travels on the basis of information revealed during interrogation
and arrested Suresh Bhatnathe, Prakash Jadhav and Vishu Yeram for
abetting the crime by providing travel documents to the suspects.
Another member of the network, Aiyasha Yusuf Khan alias Priya Dhamai,
was nabbed on Jan 12.
Driving school owners Mehboob Khan,
Ismail Chailwalla and instructor Abdul Aziz Mulla were arrested on
January 19. Mehboob Sayyed, Sultan Wani, Javad Balim, Dilip Navani,
Rias Ansari, Kailash Rathod and Babu Gawas were also detained for
helping provide fake documents to the hijack team.
Police and intelligence officials
here say they would not be surprised if there are common strains
between the Kandahar hijack operation and the WTC bombings. In fact,
Ahmed Omar Sheikh is a key suspect in the planning and execution
of Terror Tuesday. Intelligence agencies say he could have been a
member of the backup team that masterminded the slamming of the jets
into the WTC towers and the Pentagon. The connections between the
two incidents are not as tenous as they might seem.
