The Ahmedabad police may soon have to endure the acute embarrassment of retracting its claim to have unravelled the conspiracy behind the terrorist attack on the Akshardham temple in Gandhinagar last year.
Police Commissioner K R Kaushik had claimed that his men had arrested five persons who had provided assistance to terrorists of the Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Tayiba to attack the temple.
But the bottom has been shot out of this claim by the arrest in Jammu and Kashmir of an illiterate motor mechanic hailing from Bareilly last week.
Based on what the mechanic, Chand Khan, has told them, the Jammu and Kashmir police now say the JeM was never involved in the attack and the entire operation was executed by two LeT men from Pakistan named Shakeel and Abdullah.
Khan had migrated from his hometown in Uttar Pradesh to Anantnag district in Kashmir in search of a job. In Anantnag, he eventually found work as a motor mechanic. In the course of his stay there, Khan came into contact with the two LeT operatives and agreed to help them in their travel within India.
On October 19, 2002, Khan left for Bareilly with the two terrorists and his family in an LeT vehicle. After dropping his family home, he and the two terrorists went by bus to New Delhi and via Jaipur they reached Ahmedabad, hiding their weapons in their bedding. The temple was attacked on October 24.
The Kashmir police insist their information is "100 per cent correct". Chand Khan has also been interrogated by top officers of the intelligence establishment in Kashmir. The motor mechanic reaffirmed that the two terrorists killed in the Akshardham complex were Pakistanis.
The Gujarat police had accused five residents of Ahmedabad of helping the terrorists. These residents were identified as Salim Sheikh, Altaf Malek, Adam Ajmeri, Mufti Mansuri and Maulana Sayyeed.
Ten days ago, when the police had gone to arrest them in the Old Ahmedabad areas of Dariyapur and Shahpur, they had to face stiff resistance from the local people.
Commissioner Kaushik was unavailable for comment as he is visiting the United Kingdom. But Gujarat Minister of State for Home Amit Shah told rediff.com, "There is no gap between our version and the version of the J&K police. We had announced the names of the accused only after they were interrogated by the central intelligence agencies."
Asked about Chand Khan's statement, Shah said, "I leave it to you whether to believe him or Commissioner of Police Kaushik."
He added, "It is an old trick of criminals to create confusion and mislead investigations. The media are ignorant of such tricks. Why don't you appreciate that a one-year-old case has been solved by the crime branch in Ahmedabad?"