What exactly is the evidence in the Mumbai terror attacks, seen as the worst such attack on India, that points a finger towards Pakistan?
Do the evidence and the confessions of the captured terrorist nail the Pakistan link? Investigators tracking the Mumbai terror attacks say it does and the evidence is mounting.
The police have found matchboxes, toothpaste, medical kits, and clothes with Pakistani markings on the boat Kuber. These things, along with the confessions of Abdul Rehman Qasab, a wage labourer who says he is from Faridkot in Pakistan, point towards the Pakistan link.
He says there are nine others with him, most of them young men from the underclass. They were recruited by the Lashkar and trained in Muzaffarabad, it appears from ex-military men. Qasab claims that there may have been an army base nearby. He says they would occasionally hear explosions from there.
“They were trained by ex army officers,” said Mumbai police commissioner Hasan Gafoor.
At the Lashkar training camp, they were shown images of the targets on a laptop, both the interiors and exteriors of locations like the Taj and the Trident. Their brief was clear – go in for a suicide mission, and prolong it by taking hostages, so that the attention of the world, is fixed on them, for as long as possible. In the end, it all went according to plan, except when they entered the CST.
The terrorists had been instructed to shoot and then go to a higher floor and fire so there could be more casualties. Since their plan failed in CST, they were at a loss what to do. So they went to Cama hospital but when additional commissioner Date went there. They didn’t know what to do. Police officers were shot, then they tried to flee and were caught in the cross fire.
They fled from CST and ended up on Marine Drive where one was killed and one captured that investigators say is among the most direct evidence so far of a Pakistani link.