Ansari did a reconnaissance of several landmarks in Mumbai including the Bombay Stock Exchange, the Mumbai police headquarters at Crawford Market, the Maharashtra police headquarters in Colaba, the Mahalaxmi temple and the Sidhivinayak temple. He went to the Taj and the Oberoi hotels as a tourist and shot video footage of the interiors. He also captured the CST and the Chabad House on tape. Besides, he hand-drew the maps of all the 26/11 targets. In December 2007, he travelled to Kathmandu, where he met and handed over the material to Bihar-born Sabahuddin. Sabahuddin had also conspired in attacking the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, in December 2005. Ansari then travelled on a Pakistani passport to Karachi and gave the maps to Muzammil as well. Later, when Ansari and Sabahuddin were arrested by the UP ATS in February 2008, several hand-drawn maps of different roads and buildings and installations in Mumbai were recovered from them. But the video footage and maps of the 26/11 targets had already been handed over to the LeT top brass in Pakistan.

'Did you ever meet Hafiz Sayeed, the chief of LeT?'

'Yes. He came and gave sermons during one of our early training sessions. He told us that Muslims worldwide need to rise in jihad against the infidels.'

'What else did Sayeed say in his sermon?' asked Maria.

'He said that we had to fight the war for Allah. He said if we die waging jihad, our faces would glow like the moon. Our bodies would emanate scent. And we would go to paradise.'

'Did you ever have a one-on-one meeting with Sayeed?'

'No. Never. He was a very big man and I was just one of the recruits.'

Maria, of course, knew by now that Kasab was small fry, just a foot soldier, and this was as far as he could take him in the investigation. As Maria got up to leave the room Kasab said, 'Sahab. Will you tell me who have you arrested besides me?'

'You will come to know,' said Maria and left.

Keeping in mind Rakesh Maria's impeccable record in investigating terror-related cases, the Maharashtra government made him the chief investigator of the 26/11 terror attack on Mumbai. The 1993 serial bomb blasts and the 2003 Gateway of India and Zaveri Bazar blasts were the other terror cases that had been cracked by Maria. Over the next two months, in coordination with the RAW and IB, Maria analysed the satellite phone, the GPS instruments, the mobile phones, the AK-47 rifles, pistols, hand grenades, and the speedboat, among other things recovered from the scenes of crime.

The speedboat used by the terrorists to cover the last leg of their journey to Mumbai was brand new but was painted yellow to make it look old. The terrorists had also erased the engine number but with the help of forensic experts the police retrieved the original number -- 67 CL-1020015 -- which was manufactured by Yamaha Motor Corporation, Japan, and imported into Pakistan by a company named Business and Engineering Trends, situated at 24, Habibullah Road, Off Davis Road, Lahore. The 9mm pistols recovered from the terrorists bore the trademark and name of Diamond Nedi Frontier Arms Company, Peshawar. The unexploded hand grenades recovered from different places were found to be manufactured by an Austrian company named Arges which had given a franchisee to a Pakistani ordinance factory near Rawalpindi. Similar hand grenades had been recovered from terrorists involved in the 1993 serial blasts in Mumbai and the attack on Indian Parliament on 13 December 2001.

The email sent to Indian media houses in the name of an organization called Deccan Mujahideen claiming responsibility for the attack was tracked to a proxy server in Russia. Investigation revealed that the account used to send the email belonged to Zarrar Shah, the communications chief of the LeT who was also in touch with the terrorists on the phone while they were holed up in the two hotels and in Chabad House. It was also revealed that Shah had organised a payment of US $ 238.78 to a New Jersey-based net telephony company named Callphonex to buy a VoIP connection. While buying the net telephony connection Shah used the fake name 'Kharak Singh' purportedly based in India. But the payment was sent by one Javed Iqbal who had a Pakistani passport numbered KC 092481. The connection thus purchased was used to make dozens of telephone calls to the terrorists while they were shedding innocent blood and unleashing the carnage in Mumbai.

The satellite phone used by the terrorists from the high seas was of Thuraya make. It was used to make calls to the LeT higher-ups while the ten terrorists were sailing towards Mumbai.

Over the weeks Maria interrogated Kasab many times. After the first few sessions Maria started speaking to Kasab in Punjabi. (Since Maria's forefathers were from Punjab, he speaks the language very well). One afternoon, about a month after the incident, Maria summoned Kasab in his office.

'Do you want to meet your other colleagues now?' he asked.

'Yes I would like to see them,' Kasab replied.

Maria called a crime branch officer inside his office and told him, 'Please take him to the place where his others friends have been kept. After their meeting bring him back to my office.'

Kasab was driven in a police vehicle to JJ Hospital. As Kasab entered the building he realised it was a hospital. 'Are they all badly injured?' he asked an accompanying police officer. The officer looked at him and said, 'You can see for yourself.'

Kasab was taken to the mortuary and the bodies of all the nine terrorists were slid out. Bodies of Javed and Shoaib were half charred. Nazeer's body was like a frozen mound of charcoal. Ismail's head had been severely damaged due to his bullet injury. Hafiz Arshad's face was almost completely burnt. Fahadullah had been shot through his eye. Nasir and Babar Imran's bodies were riddled with bullets. The faces of the terrorists were twisted, teeth jutting out, and the skin of the face was deathly pale or scalded and burnt. There was a sickening smell in the room. Kasab could not stay there for long. He told the officers he wanted to leave. He was driven back to Maria's office.

As Kasab entered the room Maria asked him, 'So, did you see the glow on their faces and smell the fragrance of roses emanating from their bodies as Hafiz Sayeed had told you?'

Kasab kept staring at the floor. Tears rolled down his face. Maria told a few constables to escort Kasab back into the crime branch lock-up.

Image: The slain terrorists

Excerpted from 26/11 Mumbai Attacked, Edited by Harinder Baweja, Roli Books, 2009, with the publisher's kind permission.

Also see:
'The terrorists cannot be followers of Islam'
Video: Commando chief saw 50 bodies at Taj

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