Cops get Kasab to trace his journey on Google Earth

This was done using satellite images provided by Google Earth. The 10 men were also shown detailed pictures of roads, routes and buildings on a laptop, a senior officer said. “They would be shown all this and asked to memorise them. They would later be tested with questions such as what they would see on their right if they entered a particular road and what would be on their left,” the officer said.

Mumbai Police sought to test Kasab’s expertise and asked him to trace the route he and his accomplice Ismail Khan—who was shot dead in the encounter at Girgaum Chowpatty—took from CST station after killing dozens there and headed towards Metro Cinema via Cama Hospital. Not only did Kasab succeed but he also managed to zero in on his village in Pakistan on Google Earth, investigators said.

While this answers some of the questions about how the 10 terrorists seemed to know their way around a foreign city so well, they are still working on the source of the pictures on the laptops and on the funding of the attacks and the communications network used.

Suspected LeT terrorists Fahim Ansari and Sabahuddin Ahmed are being questioned over their possible role, especially since Ansari is alleged to have taken pictures and made videos of several sensitive locations around Mumbai.

Recounting Kasab’s early hours in the custody of the Crime Branch, police said that he at first tried to resist questions and sought to act tough, apparently telling his interrogators to beat him up or even eliminate him. But he eventually softened, forced partly by police who showed him the body of his dead accomplice. “During their indoctrination, these militants are told by their instructors that once they are killed in jehad, their bodies emit a glow and a fragrance before they rise to heaven to enjoy the company of the virgins waiting for them,” a source said. “So we showed him Ismail’s body.”

Kasab is also believed to have told police that the training and indoctrination included strong anti-Semitism sessions.