Mumbai, Nov 25: It's 17 long years since Pakistani Ajmal Kasab and his terrorist accomplices executed a bloodbath in Mumbai, killing 175 persons and injuring 300 others. There was no mistaking that it was an operation masterminded by the ‘S’ branch of Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), which wanted to spread its vicious war away from the Kashmir theatre.
The 69-page dossier compiled by the Indian security establishment gives massive proof of the ISI's active role through its proxy, the Lashkar-e-Taiba, which in turn was closely aligned with the Al Qaeda of Osama Bin Laden.
British investigative journalists Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy aver in their book The Exile that “In 2008, according to two former aides to the Lashkar-e-Taiba leader Hafiz Saeed, Osama had travelled to Manshera (a city in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) to attend an extraordinary meeting for the Mumbai operation of November 26, 2008... It had been facilitated by Lashkar, overseen by the ISI's S-wing and sponsored by Al Qaeda.”
Apparently, documents post the U.S. commando operation against Osama revealed that Hafiz Saeed had been in close touch with Osama almost till the latter's death.
On August 3, 2015, former chief of the Pakistani Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) Tariq Khosa admitted in an op-ed piece in Karachi's Dawn newspaper that the ten terrorists had been members of the Lashkar and that there was forensic evidence that they had received training in a camp situated in Sindh province.
He further revealed that the control room in Karachi from where the Lashkar directed the Mumbai operation and the ship which transported the killers to Mumbai had been seized.
However, till date Pakistan has not taken any substantial action against the Lashkar and its handlers Major Iqbal and Sajid Majeed and others who are described by Islamabad as “non-state actors” but who are very much trained, sponsored and deputed to execute the diabolic attack on 26/11.
This brings us to the question of whether the extremely well-planned operation could have been executed by Kasab and Co without support from within Mumbai. This angle, sadly, has not been explored to the fullest extent. Sources said the Dawood Ibrahim gang, which had played an active role in the 1993 serial bombing of Mumbai, worked in close tandem with the Lashkar in executing the 2008 operation.
Dawood Ibrahim's men, who are active in the docks conducting smuggling of narcotics, diesel and other items, had guided Kasab and his associates in avoiding Indian Coast Guard ships patrolling the coast off Mumbai and landing at a precise point in the fishermen's colony in front of Badhwar Park in Colaba. And from then on, local operatives led the terrorists to Café Leopold, Chabad House, The Taj, CST railway station and other targets.
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The ease with which the terrorists were able to attack multiple targets revealed that they had received extensive local help. It is true that David Headley, an American accomplice, had conducted extensive recce of the targets. But that alone would not have been sufficient to execute the violent operation on the bloody night of 26/11.
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