Chidambaram talks of “Indian handler’ in Mumbai attack

The ten Pakistani terrorists who attacked Mumbai on November 26, 2008 could have been guided by an Indian handler whose true identity was yet to be ascertained, Home Minister P Chidambaram has said.

"When we say he could be an Indian, he could be somebody who acquired Indian characteristics. He could have been infiltrated into India and lived here long enough to acquire an Indian accent, familiarity with Indian Hindi words or he could be somebody who exfiltrated from India to Pakistan and was adopted by the militants there," Chidambaram disclosed in a TV channel.

While refusing to speculate on the name of the handler, the Home Minister said investigators had known for long time that there was a handler in 26/11 attack who could be an Indian. "We know him by Abu Jindal that something we have known for many many months now... but he is not Abu Jindal. That is not his real name. We cannot put a finger who he is, unless we get a voice sample. And they won't give us voice sample.

"There is a speculation that Abu Jindal could be A, Abu Jindal could be B... but how as a Home Minister I can speculate? I can't speculate," he told the news channel.

Who is Abu Jindal?

Who is Abu Jindal, believed to be the lone Indian in the Lashkar’s control room in Karachi which directed the 26/11 attackers to their targets? The question continues to beg for answer even more than a year after the outrage.

Mohammad Amjad Khwaja, an activist of Harkat-ul-Jihad-i-Islami from Hyderabad who was recently arrested in Chennai, told his interrogators that Jindal was the alias of Syed Zabiuddin Ansari, a Lashkar operative from Beed in Maharashtra. Ansari, along with several other fugitive jihadis, has been sheltered in Pakistan by the ISI-Lashkar combine as part of their Karachi Project to target India by using its own nationals.

Khwaja pointed to Ansari after police played recordings of the conversation between Jindal and the two terrorists who had attacked Chabad House in Mumbai .

But Indian intelligence agencies are still not sure and suspect that Jindal could well be the alias of fugitive Indian Lashkar jihadi, Hyderabad’s Abdul Aziz Gidda. Like Ansari, Gidda has been housed in Karachi as part of the ISI-Laskhar gameplan against India. Suspicions about his presence in the Lashkar control room are derived from Jindal’s instruction to terrorists that they introduce themselves as Indians belonging to Toulichowki in Hyderabad. Intelligence agencies also feel that Khwaja, who has been close to Gidda, has a vested interest in diverting the attention away from his friend. Both Khwaja and Gidda were in SIMI before joining Lashkar.

The investigators were alerted to the possibility of the presence of an Indian among those who choreographed the brutal attack on Mumbai after Jindal used the word “prashasan” — administration in official Hindi — while shouting directions to terrorists. Their suspicions were confirmed by Ajmal Kasab, the lone 26/11 attacker in Indian custody, who spoke of an Indian being among those who trained his gang. Jindal was asking the Chabad House terrorists to identify themselves as Muslims from Hyderabad who had staged the attack on Mumbai to avenge the persecution of Muslims in India by ‘prashasan’.

- Asian Tribune -