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Terror secrets stun Mumbai blasts investigators

Terror secrets stun Mumbai blasts investigators

Author: Nandu R Kulkarni
Publication: The Statesman
Date: July 30, 2006
URL: http://www.thestatesman.net/page.arcview.php?date=2006-07-30&usrsess=1&clid=2&id=151947

[Note from the Hindu Vivek Kendra: It is amazing that the investigators are stunned by the revelations. The intent of the terrorists have been made known a long time ago, and given the policy of appeasement followed by the secular parties, the terrorists were encouraged to undertake their evil design. The terrorists who were earlier apprehended with the vast cache of arms and bombs had stayed in the apartments provided at tax-payers money near the state legislative assembly.]

The Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) and other Central investigating agencies are alarmed by startling details revealed by the alleged LeT-Simi suspects like the Unani doctor Tanvir Ansari or the regional commander of these terrorist groups, Faizal Sheikh, and his brother the tech-savvy Muzammil Shaikh who gave away information about proliferating modules latent in Maharashtra with hundreds of educated youths taking oath of allegiance to Lashkar-e-Toiba and being specially trained and brain-washed in the hilly border areas of Pakistan to unleash terrorism in Mumbai and elsewhere.

Ever since the first arrest was made over ten days ago, the ATS chief Mr KP Raghuvanshi has been quite outspoken about the terrorist design of Pakistan that is being executed in India by LeT with the help of local Simi recruits. The ATS confirmed the fears of the National Security Advisers that the national landmark institutions like Barc, oil refineries and Bombay Stock Exchange are surely targets on the terrorists' map. Tavir, Muzammil and others who are in ATS custody have confirmed this suspicion during interrogation. The ATS said they could not confirm that the six terrorists so far arrested have links with the 11 July serial blasts on suburban trains. They have uncovered a much wider conspiracy to hit the sensitive points in Mumbai and other places.

The Maharashtra government too has been shaken by these revelations. The home ministry wants to create an Intelligence agency of its own on the lines of IB. The plan being discussed is to select about 500 cops and train them in Intelligence gathering with the help of sophisticated gadgets. The administration has realised that the ATS is woefully inferior to the highly advanced terrorists who during interrogation gave away many details regarding their activities but did not confess their complicity in the acts of terror. A select group of Mumbai police had been trained only once in 1998 by the IB in surveillance, phone-tapping and other intelligence gathering skills when the then police commissioner Mr Ronald Mendonca made such a request to the then IB joint director in Mumbai, Mr VN Deshmukh. The request was granted with the clearance of Delhi since Mumbai was facing serious threat from the underworld and the terrorist groups.

The ATS and other investigating agencies like the Crime Branch are trying to trace the complex ways of the terrorist modules which operate independent of each other and give no clue as to their plans. It is learnt that the vital member of a module is a bomb-maker who normally stays away from the scene of proposed attack but visits the town or city to be attacked (like Mumbai) to assemble the device and vanishes a day or two before the actual attack. He is indispensable to the module since explosive makers are very few in number. He may or may not know other members of the module. The head of a certain module is called "handler", who, according to investigators, is a Pakistani or a member of LeT or Jaish-e-Mohammad. The "handler" also stays away from the targeted city or place. The operators and logistic supporters are locals who work according to a precise plan and carry out the attack.

The investigators, therefor, are non-committal about the progress of their man-hunt launched immediately on the evening of 11 July. The investigation will have to be completed within the stipulated time since it is required to draft charges. The state home ministry has shown its desperation with some drastic changes in the set up of the ATS when on Friday night it replaced two existing officers of additional CP rank with new entrants, Mr Parambir

Singh and Mr Subodh Jaiswal. They repelaced Mr Jaijit Singh and Mr Laxminarayan. The important addition to the ATS is Mumbai police's famous hitman Mr Vijay Salaskar, the crime branch inspector who so far has killed over 60 gangsters and terrorists in violent encounters.


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