Maria who was still in the middle of interrogating Kasab told Singh that the terrorist had confessed to having killed the sailor on board and his body was lying in the engine room. Maria asked for the Coast Guard's help in tracking down the vessel. Singh called up the commanding officer of Coast Guard Air Squadron 842 at the Navy base Kunjali at Colaba and told him to immediately fly two helicopters over the coast of Mumbai and see if there was any suspicious Indian fishing boat drifting in the waters. Simultaneously, a Dornier which was doing a sortie close by was also told to look for this suspicious Indian fishing trawler going up north. Within twenty minutes Singh was informed by his officers aboard the two helicopters that they could see an Indian fishing trawler drifting 5 nautical miles south off Prongs Lighthouse, in the outer anchorage of Mumbai harbour. From the helicopter, no one was visible on the boat.

At 2.40 pm Singh called up Maria's office and told him about the discovery of a suspicious boat. Maria now asked Singh to ask his men to board the boat and see if there was a satellite phone and a GPS also lying in the boat. Two Coast Guard personnel were dropped from the helicopter on to the boat who on entering the engine room found a semi-decomposed body with hands tied at the back and throat slit from ear to ear. They also saw a dark black Thuraya satellite phone and a GPS with 'Garmin' and 'GPS 12 MAP' written on either side of the screen. At this time a Coast Guard ship called Sankalp, an advanced offshore vessel, was entering the Mumbai harbour after three days of sailing. Singh told Sankalp, with eighty-five Coast Guard personnel on board, to sail towards the abandoned boat. In the meantime, the two Coast Guard helicopters kept hovering over the boat, ensuring it did not drift out of their sight. By 6 pm a team of six sailors, headed by Deputy Commandant Vijay, boarded the boat and recovered a satellite phone and a GPS that were left behind by the terrorists. The deputy commandant retrieved four wave points that indicated the sea route taken by the vessel. The first wave point was 32 nautical miles into Pakistani waters from the IMBL, the second wave point was west of Porbandar, the third wave point was south-west of Diu and the fourth wave point was 10 miles west of Bombay harbour -- the point where the terrorists had abandoned the boat and lowered their speedboat.

The Coast Guard now had before them the exact route the terrorists had taken to sail to Mumbai. And it showed that they had got into the Indian fishing boat 32 nautical miles into Pakistani waters from IMBL. That is, the mother vessel carrying the terrorists never entered the Indian waters, giving the Coast Guard no chance to intercept them. Instead, the Indian fishing boat went deep inside Pakistani waters and was probably hijacked there. The Coast Guard found an assortment of items on the vessel: fifteen blankets; the same number of winter jackets and toothbrushes; two engine covers; a raft case on the trawler; a 'Sogo' spray paint; a few empty packets of fifty rounds of bullets for .34 bore gun with a 'Made in China' label; a nylon rope; an empty diesel plastic can of a petrol filling station with a head office address of HO No. 8, Industrial Area, Karachi; a white coloured packet of tissue papers branded 'Tissue The Senses' produced by Zik Brothers, Karachi; a 10 kg packet of wheat flour from a Karachi shop called Qamar Food Products, Plot No 3/3, Raita Plot, Shah Faisal Town; a packet of Pakistan-made pickle; a matchbox made in Pakistan; a floor cleaning brush; a two-litre Mountain Dew bottle; two detergent boxes branded PAK -- All Purpose Detergent, manufactured in Pakistan; a white 50 kg gunny bag with 'Pakistan White Refined Sugar, Crop Year: 2007-2008, Expiry Date: December 2009, Net Weight 50.00 KG' embossed on it; a tube of 'Touch Me' shaving cream manufactured in Pakistan; 'Medicam' dental gel made in Pakistan; eight razors of Gillette brand; eight pencil cell batteries of Duracell; black quarter pants labelled South-O-Pole, Made in Pakistan; two packets of Nestle milk with marking of Nestle Pakistan Limited; a few black and white namaz scarves with the label 'Cashmilan Best Qlty, Phone 0614516729'; a few packets of fairness cream; three handcuffs with steel chains and a metal plate with picture of a gun with instructions in Urdu.

These items, which would become a crucial part of the material evidence of Pakistan's involvement in the carnage, made it clear that all the ten terrorists had sailed from Pakistan with supplies of Pakistani origin. The papers onboard the boat showed that it was registered in the name of Kuber with the Gujarat fisheries department with the registration number PBR 2342. The maximum speed of Kuber, which had just one engine, was 8 nautical miles per hour. It requires special skills to ride a fishing trawler and with much difficulty the Coast Guard sailors, who are trained in driving hi-tech marine vessels, drove Kuber to Sassoon docks at Colaba -- it took them three hours to cover a distance of 5 nautical miles. At 9.30 pm on 27 November, the Indian Coast Guard handed over Kuber to the Mumbai police.

Image: Kuber, the fishing trawler in which the terrorists travelled across Indian waters.
Photograph: Arun Patil

Also see:
'India's patience is not infinite'
Video: Unsung Heroes

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