Initial findings.......
Citizens’ profiling may be frowned upon in a free society. But had it not been there for security reason in US, the terror duo of Pakistani origin would have carried deadly attacks on multi-location in India and a newspaper office in Denmark.
Careful analysis of immigration records kept in the US points at one important aspect of a traveler who had not only changed his name from
Daood Gilani to David Coleman
Headley but also been frequently traveling to
UAE, Pakistan, India, Denmark and other European countries since 2006 despite having no substantial income. He had, in fact, been on multiple trips only after changing his name and acquiring new passport and here the joint terrorism task force (
JTTF) smelt the rat.
It happened in late 2008 and the
Headley chase begun through tracking his emails and telephone conversations including calls placed using long distance calling cards. More and more information came on the way including
Headley’s cell phone, which was registered in the name of a deceased individual, – making it certain for the US sleuths that they had been chasing a person who was
upto some big terror project.
Constant scanning of his Emails led the investigators to another person
Tahawwur Hussain Rana. The background check had raised equally strong suspicion. As the sleuths moved forward, they landed up with more leads – a pointer to their contacts with one of the most wanted terrorists
Ilyas Kashmiri, the operational chief of the
Azad Kashmir section of the
Harakat-
ul-Jihad-
Islami (
HuJI) with links to Al-
Queda. That lead had come to them late last year.
The chase subsequently got new dimension and the rest is history. After chasing him for over a year, the FBI sleuths had arrested
Headley on October 3 at O’Hare Airport in Chicago just before he was to board his scheduled flight to Philadelphia – the final leg of his terror plot to attack the Danish newspaper
Jyllands-
Posten, which had published 12 cartoons of Prophet
Mohammed in 2005, enraging Muslims across the world.
FBI could have arrested
Headley much before. But they did not want to lose the vital information, which he had been sharing\exchanging with US-based Rana and Pakistan based
HuJI commander
Kashmiri and
LeT leaders
Sajid Mir and
Sheikh Abdul
Rahman Saeed.
Though he was finally arrested on October 3, the FBI took care not to disclose the information till the time it could lay hands on the big fish of the entire network Rana who was the main
financer of
Headley.
They arrested Rana on October 18 in Chicago and told India what the US-based terrorists were
upto. Besides attack on Danish newspaper, they had plan to attack on National Defence College in New Delhi in near future – most probably around the time of the 26\11 carnage anniversary.
Indian agencies, which had literally no clue of such big terror plan, suddenly came in action. Though the entire episode was made public by the FBI on October 27, the Indian agencies had done some ground work before. The probe, however, got some track when
Headley’s
Rahul (
Bhatt) – son of film producer -- connection came into the media as stated by the FBI in its affidavits against the terror duo in Chicago court.
The mystery of
Rahul continued till the time he himself approached the
Mumbai Police and told them about the circumstances under which he met
Headley through a gym trainer
Vilas Warak.
Headley had first befriended
Vilas and through him he met
Rahul whom he considered so important a ‘cover’ that he had repeatedly mentioned his name in the emails he exchanged with his Pakistani handlers.
The probe got new dimension when
Headley’s Delhi visit came to light, high-lighting the inter-state ramification of the entire investigation. The probe, which had hitherto been done by
Mumbai Police, was subsequently handed over to the National Investigation Agency (
NIA).
With the trail gradually becoming clearer, the
NIA sleuths with the help of different state police started reaching all the places, besides
Mumbai and Delhi, where both
Headley and Rana had stayed to finalise their nefarious design to attack India.
Kochi,
Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Agra and
Pune have also come to the picture. While reconnaissance master
Headley visited all these cities to carefully map his targets during his multiple trips to India between 2006-09, his boss Rana had landed in
Kochi in November last year under the cover of immigration service provider.
This lead came clearer when police found that the terror duo had put out advertisements in different newspapers in
Kochi and
Mumbai, stating Rana’s expertise in providing jobs and visa to skilled and semi-skilled workers from India.
As the probe progressed, the sleuths even came across evidences which also pointed the terror duo’s role in larger conspiracy behind 26\11. Though concrete evidence to this end is need to be corroborated, the
NIA sleuths and intelligence agencies are currently focusing more on busting sleeper cells which might have been set up by the terror duo for future terror attack.
A top home ministry official said: “Instead of doing post-mortem of the 26\11 attacks, the investigators are focusing more on cracking the deadly sleeper cells. Idea is to prevent future attack. The rest will follow in due course”.
The entire episode also threw light on the ongoing cooperation between US and India on terror related information. Once the FBI will file its final charges against the duo in January next, India will approach the US for extradition of the terror duo. Till then, it is the time to crack their Indian connection to eliminate the lurking danger.
