Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab was meant to die a 'glorious' death. Shaming the infidels and upholding the spirit of jihad. But a handful of courageous police officers came in his way. They laid down their lives so that he would live to tell a story. A chilling story plotted by Lashkar-e-Toiba's military commander Zaki-ur Rahman Lakhwi at Muridke, LeT's headquarters in Lahore.
As eight of his colleagues-in-terror battled NSG commandos and the Mumbai Police at Nariman House, the Taj and the Oberoi hotels for 60 hours from the night of November 26, 2008, Kasab was recuperating from the bullet wounds he suffered while trying to flee with his 'buddy' Ismail. Though his statements and confession were recorded by investigators, Kasab was thoroughly questioned only later. During one such interrogation session, Kasab admitted that the ten-member team led by Ismail was trained by the Pakistan Marines. This trashes Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari's claim of the involvement of just non-state actors in the Mumbai attack and clearly implicates the Pakistan military establishment.
The interrogation report, which was accessed by THE WEEK, has details about the training regime Kasab, a 21-year-old school dropout, and the others underwent in five stages. His references to 'buddy pair', navigation, metal detectors and GPS, noted the interrogators in the report, pointed to the fact that he had adequate military knowledge. Pakistan Marines is a specialised unit of the navy headquartered at Muhammad bin Qasim, a port in Karachi. It carries out designated operations and handles sensitive projects of national importance. THE WEEK had earlier reported (December 21, 2008) that Pakistan naval facilities like PNS Iqbal could have been used to train terrorists.
The confidential report talked about how the LeT top brass selected Kasab and 31 others for training in late 2007 and sent them to Muridke. At Muridke, they were given basic training called Daura-Safa. They were lectured on jihad and shown video clippings on atrocities against Muslims in India. The camp lasted 21 days.
From there they were shifted to another LeT camp in Shaiwai Nala in Muzaffarabad, where they underwent a three-month advanced training to use hand-grenades, rocket launchers, mortars and firearms. They also had extensive lecture sessions on Indian security agencies and their counter-terror operations. This was followed by two months' service in one of the LeT camps, and another stint at Muridke.
Lakhwi then handpicked 16 of the 32 for intensive marine training, but three of them chickened out. According to a top intelligence source, they underwent crash courses in surveillance, reading topographical maps, sniping positions, urban warfare and kidnapping. No wonder the US Terror Alert Response Center has termed the Mumbai attack a commando-style military assault.
So thorough was the training that Kasab successfully evaded pointed queries from the interrogators in the initial stages. He was cool and composed despite injuries to both his hands. The report noted that he was using the al Qaeda tactic of resisting interrogation. Apparently, jihadis embarking on sensitive missions are trained to withstand torture. But sustained questioning cracked his resolve. Kasab said that he was introduced to specialised swimming techniques in a 'built-up' pool. According to sources, he was referring to the combat swimming training done by top naval units like the US Navy SEALs.
The team for Mumbai underwent a series of conditioning drills that introduced them to the life on the high seas. Kasab told interrogators that he and his comrades were taken to the sea briefly in the initial stages of the intensive training programme. The acclimatisation drills continued for two months in two separate instalments. Nautical miles increased in time. And at a later stage they were taught the specialised techniques of marine operations.
Finally, Lakhwi identified 10 men who would form his 'Mumbai team'. They included Ismail alias Abu Umar, Mohammed Azmal alias Abu Mujahid, Abu Ali, Abu Aqasha, Abu Umer, Abu Shoeb, Abdul Rahman (Bada), Abdul Rahman (Chhota) and Kasab. The team was divided into five pairs (Ismail and Kasab were codenamed VTS team after CST's old name, Victoria Terminus). Each buddy pair was given different targets, but each pair knew only what they were supposed to do. They were fed details about how to get down in Mumbai and move about, and were also shown a video film of the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus. They were briefed to take hostages and call up Lakhwi (whom they used to call Chacha), who would then give them contact numbers of the electronic media, through which they were supposed to make demands including their safe passage.
The operation date was fixed as September 27, but it was changed at the last minute. (Classified documents accessed by THE WEEK show that even as the Joint Anti-Terror Mechanism between India and Pakistan shared details of cross-border terrorism at its meeting on October 24, the Mumbai plan was set in motion with the connivance of the Pakistani military establishment.) The terrorists stayed on in Karachi till October 23 and were imparted additional training in speedboats. They then left for Azizabad, near Karachi. Exactly a month later, in the wee hours of November 23, Lakhwi took them to the seashore, where they boarded a launch. They shifted to a bigger launch some 25 nautical miles into the sea and boarded the vessel al Husseini an hour later. Here Lakhwi took leave, handing each one of them a sack containing eight grenades, 200 rounds of ammunition, two magazines, a pistol, an AK-47 and a mobile phone. Also, each pair was given a GPS.
It is well documented how they hijacked a launch once they entered the Indian waters, took one of the crew as guide and finally reached the Badhwar Park jetty in a dinghy. Ismail killed the guide before boarding the dinghy. They were two hours behind schedule, but nevertheless fanned out to the city to complete their mission. Kasab told the interrogators that he and Ismail took a taxi to CST. They headed straight to the common toilet where they loaded the weapons, and then came out and started firing indiscriminately. Kasab also lobbed a grenade at the crowd.
Their efforts to find a building with a rooftop to hold hostages came to a naught and the duo got out of CST and entered a building without knowing that it was the Cama Hospital. This is where Additional Commissioner S. Date fought them briefly. They escaped from the hospital and entered another lane where they took position behind a bush. Officers Hemant Karkare, Ashok Kamte and Vijay Salaskar followed them there and the terrorists flung a grenade at the police vehicle and started firing. The officers put up a valiant fight before going down. Kasab and Ismail, who suffered bullet injuries, removed the dead bodies from the police vehicle and drove to Marine Drive, looking for an escape route that never came. After the police vehicle broke down, they took a Skoda at gunpoint. With the police in hot pursuit and after Ismail died of injuries, Kasab gave up. He was thrashed by the people before the police finally laid their hands on him.
The confidential report suggested that the terrorists could in all possibility have done a recce of the targets in Mumbai much ahead of 26/11. Senior Research and Analysis Wing officers told THE WEEK that Ismail did the recce with the help of local elements. The terrorists, said the Texas-based think-tank Stratfor, had multiple accesses to the city and also exercised excellent operational security (during hostile surveillance) and discipline in the final phases of the operation.
The transformation of Kasab from a petty criminal to a terrorist is a story in itself. As he himself told the interrogators, he was born in a poor Sunni family in Faridkot in the Punjab province of Pakistan. When he turned 13 his father sent him to live with his elder brother Afzal in Lahore (Kasab has a younger brother and two sisters). Afzal, who did odd jobs, had no means to support the boy and forced him to work as a casual labourer. In end 2005, after a fight with his father at their home in Faridkot, he was thrown out from his brother's home as well. Kasab then stayed at the shrine of Syed Ali Hajveri in Lahore, where young boys who run away from home are accommodated.
Sometime in 2007, a catering service provider employed him for Rs 120 a day. He was uncomfortable with the pay and the work, and along with his friend Muzaffar Lal Khan turned to armed robbery for quick money. That turned out to be quite a productive career and the duo rented an apartment in Bangash Colony, Rawalpindi. In November that year he located a house for robbery, but decided that he needed firearms for the success of the operation. A trip was made to Faridkot, but the weapons remained elusive. They continued to look around and, on December 21, approached the Jamaat-ul-Dawa stalls in Raja Bazar, Rawalpindi, thinking that they would need training to use the firearms they were planning to acquire. They were redirected to the local LeT office, where they were given Rs 200 each and a slip, which would be their ticket to Muridke. The ticket to an 'exalted' life.
The stint at Muridke transformed the vagabond. He became supremely confident and for the first time in his life he felt wanted, belonged. He might have joined LeT for purely selfish reasons, but the fiery speeches of LeT's supreme leader Prof. Hafiz Muhammad Saeed instilled in him the spirit of jihad. The disturbing videos of torture steeled his mind. His worthless life suddenly seemed worth before the Almighty. When he returned to his house during a break, he was treated with great respect. When he went to his mother's place in Okara district just before leaving for Mumbai, he flaunted his 'mujahideen tag' to impress the villagers.
Kasab's quest for glory has now landed him in a cold bulletproof cell in the Arthur Road Jail in Mumbai, where he can't even have fresh air. His failure to end his life or escape has landed his country in a soup, leaving his president fumbling for words in Pakistan's defence. "It is difficult to believe that the Pakistani civilian government was completely unaware of what its navy and the military intelligence apparatus were up to," said a senior intelligence officer. "Since the Marines and the ISI brass were privy to the Mumbai plot it won't be far-fetched to presume that a section of civilian political establishment was kept in the loop."
The Mumbai attack changed India. According to former R&AW chief Vikram Sood, it was an assault on the nation. "The Mumbai attack targeted the young and rising India while the previous strikes were mostly aimed at hitting markets, crowded places and temples-which essentially was Old India," said David Olive, Washington Homeland Security Roundtable moderator, who is also a top homeland security lobbyist.
The Young India was shocked at the audacity of the terrorists but woke up to the threat by increasing surveillance along the coasts and introducing strict security measures in key installations across its cities. While Old Pakistan continued to slip into abyss as the monster it created threatened the very existence of the country.