The Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) of Mumbai Police, which is investigating last year’s July 11 blasts on local trains, has brushed under the rug a crucial piece of information that could have exposed its lack of preparedness in gathering intelligence about terror operatives in the city.

Had Mumbai Police, which provided local support to Delhi Police in their attempt to catch Raheel Abdul Rehman, an LeT operative based in Grant Road, followed up on that missed chance, they could well have prevented 7/11. For this had happened two months before the train blasts, and could have led to Faisal Ataur Rehman Sheikh, who the ATS says is LeT’s western India chief and mastermind of the terror plot.

Records accessed by The Indian Express, including an interrogation report of Faisal, who was arrested after the blasts, show Faisal as having told his interrogators that two months earlier Raheel had sought to meet him urgently. Raheel, who was injured in the leg, had told him he’d managed to escape a Delhi Police team that zeroed in on his house after gathering information from two other operatives in their custody — Firoz Ghaswala and Mohammad Ali Chhipa. Raheel had taken Rs 15,000 from Faisal and asked him not to contact anyone and just carry on “the work” entrusted to him, saying, “If I’m arrested, you’ll be arrested too.”

Chhipa and Ghaswala were arrested at the Hazrat Nizammudin railway station in Delhi on May 9, 2006, carrying some 4 kg RDX, four detonators, and some cash. It was Faisal who had arranged for their training in camps in Pakistan.

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