Mumbai ATS doubts UP story on terror plot, won’t seek accused

ATS chief and Joint Police Commissioner Hemant Karkare told The Indian Express that his investigators were satisfied with the short, two-day interrogation of suspected Lashkar-e-Toiba operative Fahim Ahmed Ansari alias Abu Zarar when he was brought to the city by the UP Special Task Force.

“All that he has said is just a version provided by him,” Karkare said. “He claims to have conducted the recces in the city, and to have been indoctrinated by three locals. We have questioned him when the UP STF brought him here, and we are satisfied with this.”

“We extracted whatever information we needed from him. Fahim has no link with the 7/11 serial blasts case or any of the accused involved in it, nor does he have any link with any other case in Mumbai,” he said.

UP police had said that they had arrested Fahim, a resident of Motilal Nagar slum in Goregaon (West), and two other men from Moradabad.

The group was involved in the December 2005 attack at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, as well as the New Year’s eve attack on the CRPF camp in Rampur, Uttar Pradesh, the UP police said.

Fahim, it was said, told his interrogators in UP that he was tasked to make arrangements for the stay of the terrorists in Mumbai.

He had subsequently told ATS investigators that he had conducted recces of a dozen sensitive spots in Mumbai including Churchgate and Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus railway stations, Haj House, Haji Ali dargah, the Mumbai Police headquarters, the Maharashtra Police headquarters, Gateway of India and the BSE building.

The ATS had also said that he had been indoctrinated into jehad by three Mumbai men, two of whom are now believed to be in Pakistan, with the third man having gone underground after Fahim was arrested.

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