The 7/11 investigation is the first major case in which Mumbai police used the Internet to track down terrorists.

When the Crime Branch of Mumbai Police picked up Firoz Deshmukh of the Islamic Research Foundation on July 14, they knew they had someone who could give information on the blasts, he knew Rahil Sheikh of Grant Road.

So they got him to log in and chat with Sheikh while they watched.

In the chatroom, Rahil opened up and gave Firoz a Bangladeshi telephone number. That was the second important breakthrough. The number was immediately kept under surveillance. The police began watching the mails from and to smellofflower@yahoo.com and Ibn_chand@yahoo.com. The password for both these emails was Jannat.

When they spied on the messages and Internet chats on these emails, the police came across several phone numbers and got vital clues which finally led them to the Faisal Sheikh and Muzammil Sheikh.

But Faisal turned out to be a hard nut to crack. The Mumbai police were not sure of his exact role into the blasts until Dr. Tanveer Ansari came into the picture. It was Ansari who spilled the beans on Faisal’s proximity to Lashkar terrorist Azam Cheema.

“In the Bahawalpur base camp, I saw Faisal using Cheema’s Internet, dining with him. They were on back-slapping terms and shared a great rapport. I realised that they were close to each other. The blasts is 100 per cent the handiwork of Faisal,” Dr Ansari told in his statement to the Crime Branch.

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