Identifies different voices of handlers who were guiding and directing the 10 Pak terrorists from a control room in Karachi
Mumbai : A 14-minute audio CD was played in the Special TADA Court on Saturday where the attackers and the handlers of the 26/11 attacks in the city were heard talking to each other while the sordid events were unfolding in Mumbai.
The day also marked the end of the examination of Pakistani-American terrorist David Headley by Special Public Prosecutor Ujjawal Nikam and the start of the cross-examination by defence advocate Wahab Khan.
The CD was played in the court, on which several persons were heard talking in Punjabi. The conversation centered around the 26/11 attack and one of the persons is heard talking of ATS chief Hemant Karkare’s death in the shooting at Taj Mahal Hotel. Some of the sentences that are heard are `jo zakham diye the unki davaa ho gayi hai’ and `apni duaa ko yaad rakhnaa and usey roj teen baar kehnaa’. The conversation also reveals that several other officers have been killed in the attack and that there is panic in the city.
When Headley was asked to identify the voices in the audio clip, he replied that they are Abu Kafa and Abu al Kamaa and Sajid Mir, though he added that the voice quality was not very clear and he could not hear the contents clearly.
During the examination, Headley was asked about the fact that he had talked with Pakistani ISI officials about how Shiv Sena member Rajaram Rege could be used for carrying out an attack on the Sena leadership.
While some Pakistani ISI officials were keen to do a project with Rege to gain his confidence, Headley himself was not interested in any such activities and only wanted to reach his objective of carrying out attacks at different places in Mumbai. Major Iqbal of the ISI was also keen to know if Rege could help them with obtaining knowledge of the activities of the Indian military and paramilitary forces.
The defence lawyer was pulled up by judge GA Sanap for alleging that the prosecution was asking “leading questions” to Headley. The judge said that the defence lawyer was making an “immature statement” and asked him why he did not raise the issue all this time. The judge got further upset when Wahab Khan raised the issue of a police officer entering the judge’s chambers in the morning.
When Nikam declared that his examination was over, the defence advocate was asked to start his cross-examination of David Headley. However, Wahab Khan requested some time from the court to carry out the cross-examination since he needed to study the documents in the case. However, he was asked to start the cross-examination right away since there was the issue involved of getting connected with the witness from the USA.
Nikam later told the media that the examination of Headley had clearly shown that though Hafiz Saeed, Zakiur Lakhvi and many others were involved in the 26/11 attack, there was no action taken against them in Pakistan. LeT and Al-Qaeda were convinced that 26/11 attack masterminds Hafiz Saeed and Zakiur Rehman would face only “superficial” action from the Pakistani authorities
In fact, Headley himself had visited Pakistan on several occasions after the attack, but was never apprehended by the agencies there. After the 26/11 Mumbai attack, the terrorist groups were planning to use Headley further for carrying out an attack on a newspaper in Denmark, and the operation was called `Project Mickey’. The project fell through.
