Solanki, incidentally, was intercepted by Pakistan authorities on January 25, 2002 and was also taken into custody.

Kuber had first gone fishing on October 30 and returned to Porbander on November 13 at around 2 pm with over 1000 kg of fish. What followed, Coast Guard officials said, was unusual. “Any fisherman after such a long haul and such a good catch takes a break of at least 24 hours but Solanki left for the high seas again with four other fishermen on the same day,” said an official.

When the trawler was tracked down on November 27 — 14 days after it had left Porbander — it had a mere 50 kg of fish. “This was suspicious. We also did not find any food usually used on the high seas. There were a few kilograms of apples,” said the official.

Custom records show the trawler sailed with five people including Solanki from Una. The others were Dhiru Arjun from Una, Balwant Prabhu from Navsari, Natu Nanu from Navsari and Ramesh Nagaji from Junagadh. All are believed to have been killed and local police and eyewitnesses have reported seeing four bodies.

Kasab is said to have told interrogators that the Pakistani mother ship Al Husseini picked up four of Kuber’s crew and left Solanki onboard Kuber. According to Kasab, someone from the mother ship called one of the terrorists on board Kuber to say, “Hum yahan yeh chaaron ko khana de rahe. Tum kya kar rahe ho?” (feeding as a euphemism for killing) to which the terrorist replied: “Hum ise abhi khana dene ja rahe hain.”