Author: TNN
Publication: The Times of India
Date: February 2, 2010
URL: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Over-a-yr-after-26/11-Who-was-Lashkars-Indian-hand/articleshow/5525952.cms
Who is Abu Jindal, believed to be the lone
Indian in the Lashkar's control room in Karachi which directed the 26/11 attackers
to their targets? The question continues to beg for answer even more than
a year after the outrage.
Mohammad Amjad Khwaja, an activist of Harkat-ul-Jihad-i-Islami
from Hyderabad who was recently arrested in Chennai, has told his interrogators
that Jindal was the alias of Syed Zabiuddin Ansari, a Lashkar operative from
Beed in Maharashtra. Ansari, along with several other fugitive jihadis, has
been sheltered in Pakistan by the ISI-Lashkar combine as part of their Karachi
Project to target India by using its own nationals.
Khwaja pointed to Ansari after police played
recordings of the conversation between Jindal and the two terrorists who had
attacked Chabad House.
But intelligence agencies here are still not
sure and suspect that Jindal could well be the alias of fugitive Indian Lashkar
jihadi, Hyderabad's Abdul Aziz Gidda. Like Ansari, Gidda has been housed in
Karachi as part of the ISI-Laskhar gameplan against India. Suspicions about
his presence in the Lashkar control room are derived from Jindal's instruction
to terrorists that they introduce themselves as Indians belonging to Toulichowki
in Hyderabad. Intelligence agencies also feel that Khwaja, who has been close
to Gidda, has a vested interest in diverting the attention away from his friend.
Both Khwaja and Gidda were in SIMI before joining Lashkar.
The 'Ansari-or-Gidda' riddle cannot be solved
immediately because investigators don't have voice samples of either. Matching
voice samples with that of Jindal could have helped solve the conundrum.
The investigators were alerted to the possibility
of the presence of an Indian among those who choreographed the brutal attack
on Mumbai after Jindal used the word "prashasan" - administration
in official Hindi - while shouting directions to terrorists. The dogged insistence
on the use of sarkari Hindi has seen 'prashasan' slip into daily use including
in places which don't form part of the Hindi belt, like Maharashtra.
Their suspicions were confirmed by Ajmal Kasab,
the lone 26/11 attacker in Indian custody, who spoke of an Indian being among
those who trained his gang.
Jindal was asking the Chabad House terrorists
to identify themselves as Muslims from Hyderabad who had staged the attack
on Mumbai to avenge the persecution of Muslims in India by 'prashasan'.
