| They could have been just another group of young men travelling from the dust bowls of Bihar, seeking respite from the darkness of poverty and pursuing a dream of prosperity. The dark night of June 25 provided the perfect setting, camouflaging the motive of two men from across the border who boarded the train from Patna. A tall, hefty Kamal Ahmed Ansari escorted the two inconspicuous passengers into a seemingly unknown territory. The men didn't exchange words for two days in the Mumbai-bound train and melted into the populated suburbs as soon as they arrived. Ansari and his wards, though, were only a part of the big team. By the time they reached Mumbai, the entire team of 11 Pakistanis-who had sneaked through the porous border- was in place. So was the Indian contingent. Seven two-member teams with one Indian and a Pakistani were formed for the operation. Terror, you could say, had arrived in Mumbai. It had taken the group three months-from one fateful rainy night in Bahawalpur, Pakistan, in March 2006-to plan and execute an attack that shook the commercial capital and shocked the country yet again.  | ON TERROR'S TRAIL
A cross-border conspiracy which used modules and IEDs to attack Mumbai's rush hour commuters was finally unravelled. In two months, the Mumbai Police lurched from clueless to capable | | |  March 2006
Conspiracy is hatched. LeT's Azam Cheema masterminds blasts in his sprawling mansion at Bahawalpur with two modules of LeT, SIMI and their leaders. | | May 2006
Fifty persons from India and Pakistan are sent to the training camp at Bahawalpur. They are trained to make bombs, fire guns and resist interrogation. | | June 25, 2006
LeT infiltrates bombers. Kamal Ansari transports two Pakistanis via Nepal border, Abdul Majid transports five via Bangladesh border. Unknown man escorts four via Kutch. | | June 27, 2006
The 11 men are lodged at four different places in Mumbai suburbs. Two lodged in Malad, four in Bandra, two in Borivli and three in Mumbra. | | July 8-10
Ehsan Ullah transports 15 to 20 kg RDX from Pakistan via Kandla Port. Ammonium nitrate bought in Mumbai. Eight cookers purchased from two different shops in Santa Cruz. | | July 9-10, 2006
Bombs made in Mohammed Ali's one room flat in Govandi. Each cooker filled with 2-2.5kg RDX and 3.5-4 kg ammonium nitrate. Transported to Sheikh's Bandra home. | July 11, 2006
Terrorists divide themselves in seven groups, two Indians and one Pakistani in each. Each group carries one pressure cooker in black Rexine bag, covered with newspapers. Planters get off at Churchgate station and use the subway that connects platforms to board trains. | | | | | 200
Phone calls made by Faisal to girlfriend Manisha, a bar girl | | 50
Policemen and five dogs worked at the blast sites to sniff out evidence. | | 40
Policemen and four IPS officers worked with the ATS on solving the case | | 20
Kg RDX was transported from across the Pakistan border via the Kandla Port | | WHY PRESSURE COOKER?
Packed with explosives, the humble cooker becomes a deadly force multiplier. The bomb is triggered by an alarm clock completing a circuit. The blast wave from an RDX explosion travels at over 8,000 metres per second-from the confines of a cooker the wave has thrice the force. Nepal's Maoists first used cookers in a wave of attacks, which led India to ban their export in 2003. They were first used in the Varanasi blasts of March 7, 2006 killing 21. | | | | | A Mammoth Task
Police started from scratch as there were no clues on the site. All they had was seven charred train compartments and the knowledge that ammonium nitrate was used. | | The First Steps
ATS chief KPS Raghuvanshi split officers into seven teams for the seven blasts. Sought RAW and IB inputs. Police detained over 400 people from Navi Mumbai, Mahim, Mira Road, Bhyander, Malegaon and Aurangabad, without any success. | | The Cooker Handles
Police sift through blast sites and find pressure cooker handles and parts of aluminum lids in each of the seven compartments. Shops in Santa Cruz, which sold cookers, traced. | | Breakthrough
First success on July 18, when police intercept phone calls from Mumtaz Choudhary to his brother-in-law Kamal Ahmed Ansari-trained in Pakistan-at Basupatti, Bihar. | | Tracing the RDX
Cotton swab method reveals Faisal Sheikh's house in Bandra was used to store bombs. | The Nemesis
Kamal Ansari and Ehtesham module was unearthed by the ATS, the Crime Branch unveiled the module led by Faisal Sheikh. Mastermind Raheel Sheikh still missing. | | Cut to Lashkar-e-Taiba's (LeT) India commander Azam Cheema's palatial house in Bahawalpur, Pakistan, where he was playing host. It was the congregation of the faithful, the new converts and pilgrims to the world of terror. Like-minded or rather mindless jehadis from various parts of the world had assembled for their sermon. Sitting in a regal room were the Indian visitors who had reached his place via Bangladesh, Nepal and Iran. The air was thick with idealism. One cue from Cheema was enough to kickstart another round of bloody "freedom struggle". LeT training camps at Bahawalpur were now swarming with 50 men waiting to become jehadis. Situated right in the middle of a jungle, the camp is the school for terror, which trains men in identifying, handling, firing and dismantling weapons. A major chapter involves education in making, planting and finally testing explosives in special water tanks. The trainees are also taught the use of modern communications tools-from Internet to satellite phones-to effectively and efficiently carry out their intent. That night, says the police, the blueprint of a plan designed by the ISI and executed by the LeT was drawn. The joint force was all set to orchestrate one of the biggest carnages that Mumbai was to witness in days to come-the serial bomb blasts that killed 187 people. THE COUNTDOWN BEGINS | | PICTURE SPEAK | |  | | ON SUSPICION: Soon after 7/11, Mumbai police detained 400 Muslims | | By July 8, the Pakistanis had already settled in the new environment in middle and lower class Muslim localities in the suburbs and Mumbra. The RDX was on its way to Mumbai. Smuggled through the Kandla port in Gujarat, it was transported by road to Mumbai. Ehsan Ullah, the dark and well-built man accompanying the most deadly contraband from Kandla port, had procured 20 kg of RDX, roughly the amount that caused the maximum casualty at Century Bazaar in 1993. Since the beginning of the year, the Maharashtra Police had seized over 400 kg of RDX, but this was one shipment that slipped the dragnet. What is worse, the police fear some other consignments too may have reached their destination and may be with sleeper cells. Unlike the 1993 blasts, this time RDX was not the only substance used to shake up Mumbai. Dr Tanvir Ansari, a unani medicine practitioner at the Saboo Siddique hospital at Byculla, procured 20 kg of ammonium nitrate, which when mixed with RDX, increased the explosive force by a factor of three. Ammonium nitrate was procured from the quarries in Thane where the chemical is available for the well-connected. Money was no problem. Hawala payments from Saudi Arab via a techie, Rizwan Ahmed Davre, were sent to Faizal Sheikh, who is suspected to be the LeT chief of Mumbai. The Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS), which recovered 26,000 riyals (Rs 3,16,956) from Sheikh's house, estimates that over Rs 60 lakh had been sent to Faisal via hawala in two years. | | DIPLOMACY | | | A Litmus Test For Joint Mechanism
After India furnishes terror evidence, world may put pressure on Musharraf
By Saurabh Shukla | | PICTURE SPEAK | |  | TERROR Hub
Pakistan is a safe haven for terror masterminds | | In the lexicon of India's neighbourhood policy if there is one frequently abused and misused phrase, that is "putting Pakistan on notice". Will it really happen this time-is the key question that is reverberating all over, now that there is more evidence that Pakistan's intelligence agency ISI masterminded the 7/11 bombings in Mumbai that killed 187 innocents. The offspring of the Havana truce, the joint terror mechanism, is yet to come out of the incubator and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said that Pakistan's cooperation in bringing the perpetrators of the Mumbai blasts to book would be the acid test. "We will test it. We have set up this mechanism. How else can we ask for information except through a mechanism like this? I think Pakistan will have to walk the talk," said Manmohan on his way back from South Africa. Armed with fresh evidence including the details of phone records and the statements of the Pakistani nationals who have been arrested and details of involvement of Pakistan-based terrorist groups, India is now planning to pursue the issue through diplomatic channels. Careful that it has to build a strong case and present credible evidence, Home Secretary V.K. Duggal and Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon met on October 4 to coordinate their responses. India's plan is that it will raise the issue at the forthcoming foreign secretary-level talks and will use the bilateral terror mechanism to drum up pressure. The Havana joint statement has specifically condemned the Mumbai blasts, and for Delhi that is the way to test Islamabad's sincerity. "We will share that information with Pakistan and ascertain how sincere they are in carrying forward the commitment," Manmohan added. Pakistan's past record on cooperating with India on terror has been ridden with arguments and debate. In fact, Pakistan's record on dismantling terror is based more on convenience than on conviction. When it is cornered or when it finds reason, it has delivered. It has handed over close to 700 al-Qaeda suspects including the big ones like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaida to the US and, by Musharraf's admission, been handsomely rewarded for it. But it has not delivered even one of India's big list of 37 suspects like Dawood Ibrahim, Masood Azhar and hijackers of IC-814. Each time Islamabad responds saying that these suspects are not in Pakistan. It is now a pattern that has resulted in a belief that Islamabad will never deliver. Pakistan has consistently ignored all appeals by India to come clean on terrorism. For instance, though Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf gave a assurance to India on January 6, 2004 that Pakistan will dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism, it still remains a promise. It is common knowledge that the ISI continues to fund and sponsor terrorist camps Even on the mechanism there are fundamental differences while India believes that the India-Pakistan anti-terrorism institutional mechanism will help it put pressure on Pakistan and it can mount international pressure if Islamabad chickens out. However, Pakistani sources point to the fact that the modalities of the mechanism are yet to be firmed up. Besides, India already had a mechanism of cooperation with Pakistan on the issue of terrorism at the home secretary level. So, how will this mechanism mark any difference? There is some disagreement even within South Block on the proposal. "Earlier too, at the highest level, Pakistan had promised that they would end terrorism and cooperate with us, but they have not followed it with any action on the ground," says a senior mea official. This mechanism will make Pakistan a stakeholder in the fight against terrorism; however, by not defining the parameters of the mechanism it has left it open for interpretation. It is not a mere coincidence that out of the 15 people arrested in connection with the Mumbai blasts, 11 are Pakistanis, and that the accused took training in Bahawalpur in Pakistan, home to many terrorist groups like Jaish-e-Mohammed. However, Pakistan is still in the denial mode. "This statement, like those made immediately after the Mumbai blasts, contains unsubstantiated allegations, which the Indian officials and media keep making for propaganda purposes," said the Pakistani statement, after the Mumbai Police blamed ISI for the blasts. While intelligence-sharing is an integral part of the proposed mechanism, it remains to be seen if there is any point discussing terror cooperation with Pakistan's intelligence agency ISI, which allegedly played an active part in spreading terror. So, the real test will be first to make the proposed initiative work and to ensure that India's concerns on terrorism are addressed. That will be a barometer to judge the success of Manmohan's Havana diplomacy; else this joint terrorism mechanism of the two countries will be yet another meaningless exercise destined to go nowhere. WILL IT WORK? India maintains that Pakistan's state apparatus and its intelligence agency ISI is training terror groups to strike inside its territory. It wants Pakistan to shut down over 56 terror camps that still function in areas under its control. Delhi wants to use the joint terror mechanism to get back fugitives like Dawood Ibrahim and Masood Azhar. | | On the morning of July 9, somewhere in Orissa, India was preparing to test its longest surface-to-surface nuclear-capable ballistic missile Agni III which could cover 3,000 km to strike as far as China. But the real enemy was under her nose, on her soil, all set to target the softest core, Mumbai. In a dingy one-room flat owned by Mohammed Ali (an alleged LeT operative), at Shivajinagar in Govandi, locally made Kanchan pressure cookers were filled with 2 kg of RDX and 3.5 kg of ammonium nitrate to create a lethal concoction. Once ready, the 'bombs' were transported to Sheikh's one-room tenement in upmarket Perry Cross lane in Bandra. | | PICTURE SPEAK | |  | | JOB DONE: Commissioner Roy and ATS chief Raghuvanshi unravel the plot | | Meanwhile in Mumbai, it was a usual Tuesday evening on July 11. The pressure cookers were wrapped in newspapers and carried in black rexine bags. The bombers left Bandra by 4 p.m. and reached Churchgate by 5.15 p.m. Taxis from respective hideouts were abandoned at Churchgate as the groups headed for the subway. The groups emerged separately on the fast-train platform numbers 3 and 4, slipping into the first-class compartment of the crowded six o'clock trains. The bags were strategically placed on luggage overheads under wet umbrellas used on rainy monsoon days. As the moment of insanity drew closer, the groups got off the respective trains at different stations. Seven bombs exploded between 6.24 p.m. to 6.35 p.m. on Matunga, Mahim, Bandra, Khar Road, Jogeshwari, Bhyander and Borivli. Barring the one bomber killed at Khar, the operation was a success. SHOCKED AND CLUELESS Like most of Mumbai, the police too was shocked at the magnitude of the attack. The first clues emerged from the tests at the forensic laboratory at Kalina when the substance used in the blasts was identified as RDX mixed with ammonium nitrate. As the sleuths worked through the night, it was clear that this was no rogue attack but a well-planned terror onslaught. Mumbai Police Commissioner A.N. Roy said a few hours after the attack, "Blasts were planned with great precision and there was no spot evidence." | | | | | | It was also clear that piecing together the jigsaw would be tough. The biggest hurdle was the magnitude of the tragedy. Minutes after the blast ripped the first class compartments of the seven Western Railway trains, panic-struck passengers and rains played deterrent in collecting evidence. Strewn between the remains of the train's compartments and charred bodies were going to be pieces of evidence, key to the trail that would later lead to people and places across the border. But, in those initial hours, with rain playing a farewell shower to the dead, the situation for the investigators was what Roy describes best: "It was nearly a blinder for us." The night that followed brought into action the otherwise ignored Bomb Detection and Disposal Squad (BDDS). Twenty officers, 50 constables and five dogs worked round the clock to find clinching evidence on the spot. Well into the night, the teams, wearing gloves and carrying umbrellas, split across the different blast spots and scanned through mounds of wreckage for that shred of vital evidence. The first big break came from the Jogeshwari blast site where the BDDS sleuths found pressure cooker handles. The squad also traced charred pieces of aluminum lids of the cookers. Investigations by local police stations in their respective areas revealed that Kanchan pressure cookers were purchased from two shops in Santa Cruz. Having got the first leads, ATS chief Krish Pal Singh Raghuvanshi put together a team. The team of four IPS officers and over 40 policemen worked overtime to crack the case. The arithmetic was simple: seven teams for seven blasts, assisted by two technical support teams. Intelligence was sought from IB, raw and the state police. Raghuvanshi set the pace for the probe team. "We were humbled by our chief who himself slept for less than four hours everyday for the first month," says an ATS official. The police began by detaining around 400 Muslims from across Maharashtra on grounds of suspicion. However, not a single clue led the investigators to the real culprits. It seemed to be a dead-end. CURIOUS PHONE CALLS | | PICTURE SPEAK | |  | ANTI-TERROR ALLIES: Manmohan
puts the ball in Musharraf’s court | | On July 18, ATS intercepted telephone calls of a certain Mumtaz Choudhary of Navi Mumbai to Kamal Ahmed Ansari in Basupatti in Bihar, near Nepal border. What intrigued the investigators was the number of calls that were exchanged between the duo, and the location of Ansari, very close to the infamous Nepal border. While Choudhary's records seemed clean, it was Ansari who, according to IB, had been trained in Pakistan. A separate team of ATS officials flew to Bihar to arrest Ansari, while Choudhary was arrested from his house in Navi Mumbai. So dramatic was Ansari's arrest that an Indian Air Force aircraft was drafted to bring him to Mumbai. The other arrest was of a shoe shop owner Khalid Aziz Sheikh at Madhubani in Bihar. Ansari and other LeT operatives allegedly used the shop premises as a meeting ground. In Mumbai, another team of ATS was designated to investigate the alleged LeT leader Raheel Sheikh's involvement in the blast. He was wanted in the October 2005 blasts in Delhi. Raheel, although cornered in Mumbai, managed to escape. But a Crime Branch team cracked the connection while interrogating Pune based ex-SIMI activist Feroz Deshmukh. He revealed that Raheel had taken a loan of Rs 15,000 in May 2006 and promised him that a certain Noman would return it to him. The trail led to Noman who confirmed that he was supposed to collect the same amount from Faisal Sheikh. While the police couldn't get Raheel it managed to nab Faisal Sheikh, alleged to be closely associated with Azam Cheema, on July 27 from Mumbai. Faisal, it turned out, is alleged to be the western India commander for LeT and one of the key players in the conspiracy. The loan loop only confirmed ATS' allegation of Raheel's links. Faisal's brother Muzzammil, was also arrested. Similarly Ehtesham Siddiqui, Maharashtra general secretary of simi, was arrested from Navi Mumbai after another accused Tanvir Ansari revealed that he was asked to pick up explosive substance by Siddiqui. Interestingly, investigators discovered a series of calls from a phone booth to Faisal's phone. The calls were by 25-year-old bar girl Manisha Chavan, who had been in a relationship with Faisal for 18 months. Manisha, who knew Faisal as Sameer, helped the police to identify him and corroborate their findings. In a sense the core had been cracked, but the police were careful to collect substantive evidence. This came from the narco-analysis tests of Faisal, Kamal Ansari and Siddiqui at the Forensic Sciences Laboratory at Bangalore. Although the tests could not be used as evidence against the accused, they helped the police in putting together pieces on how the blasts were carried out. The tests also confirmed that an unclaimed body from the blasts lying at the Sion hospital was that of Salim, a terrorist from Lahore who had planted one of the bombs. According to Roy, the entire investigation was carried out in small logistical steps. "It has been a beautiful piece of highly professional investigation by our team," he says. Indeed scientific tests such as narco-analysis, telephone analysis and the cotton swab method to determine the presence of RDX gave the police quite a few clues. Tanvir Ansari also revealed during narco-analysis that he had guests from across the border. "Kuch mehman Pakistan se aaye the," he revealed. The case may have been cracked but the police are yet to get answers for some vital questions. Even though the circumstantial evidence of ISI involvement through proxies and terror groups is clear, they will need conclusive evidence to make the charge of Pakistani involvement stick. Unlike the earlier bomb blast case, there have been no confessional statements as yet. The question, how the RDX came in through the Kandla port, is not clear. Similarly, the police have claimed that Abu Osama, the Pakistani national killed in an encounter at Antop Hill a few days after the blasts, was also one of the accused in the 7/11 blast case. When nine of the Pakistani accused fled the country, it is rather curious why Osama would stay back for a good 10 days before being killed in an encounter. But Commissioner Roy is not perturbed by these. "We are not making any diplomatic or political statements. The accused are giving us vital information and admitting their guilt after being made aware of their repercussions. We don't have any reason to disbelieve the accused." When asked about the RDX trail, Roy said it needed to be established. Obviously, there is more work to be done and the police hope to follow the missing links through further interrogations of those now in custody under the mcoca. The idea is to use the law to convert any confession into evidence. Among the questions the police must be seeking answers to are how many groups have filtered through, how many modules are active and what is the extent of the sleeper network in Maharashtra and elsewhere. Sure the evidence has to be credible but patching the missing links is vital not just to prove a point to Pakistan. Tying up the loose ends and the success of the investigations will be the first step towards preventing the next attack. Or else the loose ends could become the beginning of the next terror strike.
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