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Saturday, December 06, 2008
News Desk
LONDON: The Indian security officials have found first evidence of home-grown link in the Mumbai terrorist attacks.
They said they had maps seized from a man picked up in February, suggesting intelligence gathering had begun more than a year ago, The Telegraph reported on Friday.
After arresting Faheem Ansari, police apparently failed to recognise the importance of the nine maps, which included detailed floor plans of the Taj Mahal Palace hotel and marked the position of Mumbai’s main railway terminus.
Ansari was arrested in February in northern India, carrying hand-drawn sketches of hotels, the train terminal and other sites that were later attacked in Mumbai, said Amitabh Yash, director of the Special Task Force of the Uttar Pradesh police.
Ansari also had up-to-date blueprints of the Taj Mahal Palace hotel that were better than those available to the security services, Yash said. The revelation amounted to a double blow for the government and security forces, which have suffered a public backlash as anger grows over security lapses.
It also undermined the Indian government’s attempts to focus international pressure on Pakistan by raising the spectre of home-grown terrorist involvement in the plot to attack India’s richest city.
Ansari was alleged to have stayed in a guesthouse in the southern district of Mumbai where the terrorists arrived on fast boats from the sea last week. The material he collected during his stay was seized two months later when he was arrested for involvement in an attack in another part of the country.
The documents were included in a prosecution file but it is not clear they were widely circulated within the government. A sketch of the Fort district identified the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus railway station where gunmen opened fire at the outset of the assault, killing more than 50 commuters.
The officials said that while in custody, Ansari was taken to Mumbai for three days, where he was questioned by the city’s Anti-Terrorism Squad about the plans but the line of enquiry was dropped.
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briefs...
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ISSN 1563-9479 
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