Sources on Wednesday said that the investigating agencies are trying to find out whether Rahil Abdur Rahman Sheikh, one of the SIMI members who fled to Pakistan in 2006 after giving a slip to a police raid, was one of the persons present in the control room during the 26/11 attacks.
Once that is established, then Sheikh will be the second Indian involved in the 26/11 terror raids part from only Abu Jundal.
“Sheikh’s name had cropped up in 2006 and the ATS was on his trail. A trap was laid at a lodge in Grant Road where he was living, but he had reportedly slipped away from there and later fled to Pakistan. It is believed that he changed his name to Muzammil, and Jundal has said that he was also present in the control room in Karachi during the attacks,” said a source.
In another revelation, sources said that the intelligence agencies took more than a month to identify Jundal, as he had gained a lot of weight since he left India. While the crime branch has already sought Jundal’s custody in the 26/11 case, the Maharashtra ATS team also sent to Delhi, seeking his custody in the Aurangabad arms haul and the German Bakery blast cases.
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India reads Sarabjit mixup as ISI ploy
age correspondent
New Delhi, June 27
The fact that Pakistan did not help matters by clarifying its position on the Sarabjit release mixup is viewed sceptically by the Indian security establishment. It feels this could be a deliberate ploy by Pakistan’s ISI to un-nerve India a time when the establishment here is elated over its prized Lashkar catch — Abu Jundal — who has spilled the beans on the involvement of Pakistani “state actors” in 26/11.
On Tuesday, hours after reports emerged in the Pakistani media quoting government officials saying Sarabjit Singh’s death sentence had been converted to life imprisonment by President Asif Ali Zardari and that he had completed his sentence, the presidential spokesman in Islamabad clarified late at night that the authorities had actually taken steps for the release of another Indian prisoner Surjeet Singh, not Sarabjit.
Surjeet Singh, who will now walk free, has been in Pakistani captivity for over 30 years after being arrested on charges of spying. The fate of Sarabjit Singh, who is also lodged in the same jail as Surjeet, continues to be uncertain. Sarabjit was convicted for his alleged role in blasts in Lahore and Multan in 1990.