Mumbai, August 13: Pakistan has, for the first time, confirmed the role of one of the two Indians charged in the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks although only partially.
In its dossier given to New Delhi on July 11, Islamabad has said that Mumbai-resident Fahim Ansari traveled to Pakistan in late 2007 using forged documents as accused by the Mumbai Police.
Ansari and Bihar’s Sabahuddin Ahmed are alleged to be Indian operatives of Lashkar-e-Toiba and charged with surveying targets in Mumbai, making maps and videos and giving them to their Lashkar bosses in Pakistan to help guide the attackers who raided the city in November.
The two were in the custody of the Uttar Pradesh police for their alleged role in the attack on the CRPF camp in Rampur before being moved to Mumbai and charged in the 26/11 attack case.
Sources told The Indian Express that the dossier, an update of the action taken by Pakistan against those named as fugitives by India, mentions that Ansari entered Pakistan in November 2007 under the name “Hamad Hassan” using a bogus Pakistani passport with the number BM-680-9341. Ansari “obtained the passport through misdeclaration of facts”, it says without elaborating.
Pakistani investigators cross-checked these facts with their passport office, as well as with airport entry records, according to the dossier. However, the dossier is silent on the crucial charge that the alleged maps and videos made by Ansari were handed over to Lashkar handlers in Pakistan who used them to plot and execute 26/11.
The dossier was given days before Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Pak counterpart Yousuf Raza Gilani met on the sidelines of the NAM summit in Sharm el-Sheikh and agreed to delink action on terror by Pakistan with talks between the two countries. The dossier, among other things, also acknowledged for the first time the role of senior Lashkar operatives named by India in the 26/11 attack.
Ansari belongs to Goregaon (West) in Mumbai and was arrested on February 10, 2008, by the UP STF from Rampur for the attack on the CRPF Group Centre there on the eve of New Year 2008. Ahmed was arrested for his role in the same attack the following day from Lucknow.
Mumbai Police alleged that Ansari, after being recruited by a Lashkar scout, visited a Lashkar camp in Pakistan where handlers such as Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, Yusuf alias Muzammil and Kahfa asked him about various places in Mumbai and ordered him to survey them.
Acting on these orders, Ansari allegedly surveyed the Taj Mahal hotel, CST railway station and Colaba among other places and drew maps and took pictures.
He is then alleged to have taken the Avadh Express to Gorakhpur on January 10, 2008, and reached Kathmandu from there by road on January 13. On orders from Yusuf, he allegedly handed over the maps to Ahmed there who, in turn, passed it on to Lashkar bosses in Pakistan.
These maps were shown to the 26/11 gunmen during their training, and one such map was allegedly recovered from Abu Ismail, the terrorist who was killed in the shootout with Mumbai Police on Marine Drive on the night of the attack.
Sources said the Mumbai Police had sent a team to Nepal and had located a witness who is believed to have seen Ansari hand over the maps to Ahmed. The witness will depose in the trial, the sources added.
–Agencies