State govt quietly buried nine 26/11 terrorists in January

The Maharashtra police secretly buried in January the bodies of nine Lashkar-e-Toiba gunmen from Pakistan who attacked the city on 26/11.

Disclosing this today, Home Minister R R Patil told the Maharashtra legislative council that the bodies were buried in a "secret mission". He said this in response to queries on the expenditure that was being incurred by the state to preserve the bodies at the J J Hospital in Mumbai.

"Thirty officials were involved in the mission to dig and bury the bodies. The nine bodies were buried in January. Nobody knew about it except these officials. I wanted to see if the police can keep a secret," said Patil. "There is not a single body in the mortuary now."

"We kept the cold room meters on and asked officials to maintain security at the hospital as we did not want anyone to know about the burial," he said.

"I want to tell the Pakistan Prime Minister that if he cannot prevent terror attacks on India... we will not let them escape and we will bury them in this land," said Patil.

The nine terrorists were gunned down by security forces at different locations in the city and the bodies were preserved under special conditions at the JJ Hospital mortuary. Forensic experts and the FBI had collected DNA samples and some had matched with the families of the terrorists in Pakistan.

The bodies had begun to rot as they had been kept for more than a year. Muslim groups in the state refused to allow burial, saying they had attacked the country and killed scores. State officials had since been saying that the bodies would be kept until the 26/11 trial was concluded, which happened last week.

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