Author: Agencies
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: January 31, 2010
URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/headley-planned-to-set-up-delhi-base-in-nov/573675/
American terror suspect David Headley was
scheduled to visit India again in November last year apparently to finalise
the next target for Pakistan based Lashker-e-Taiba group and set up a base
in Delhi.
Sources privy to the investigations said that
49-year-old Headley had told his friends in India that he was coming to the
country in November for his business. Headley's messages to his friends, who
have recorded their statements before the National Investigation Agency, stopped
in the last week of September, barely a few days before he was arrested by
the FBI at O'Hare airport in Chicago on 3rd October last year, the sources
said.
After recording the statements, the sleuths
believe that since Lashker had postponed its planned terror strike on Danish
newspaper Jyllands-Posten because of international pressure following 26/11
attacks in Mumbai, Headley, who was arrested just before he could board a
plane for Philadelphia en route to Pakistan, was coming to India for finalising
the next target.
The friends, which included some women, told
the investigators that Headley was constantly in touch with them from the
US and before being arrested he had said that he was coming to India and that
they will have a get-together.
According to the documents shared by the FBI,
Headley had been asked by his handler, a Pakistani Army official that he should
wind up his office First World Office in Mumbai and 'open up a new business
centre in Delhi to be used as a cover for future activities'. The travel details
of Headley, who is now turning out to be the globe-trotting prize asset of
Lashker-e-Taiba, was being examined by various agencies, the sources said.
The investigators believe that the last visit
of Headley to India in March last year may have been to finalise synchronised
terror strikes on Jewish houses located in five cities. Piecing together the
travel trail of Headley during his visit to India in March last year, the
investigators were of the opinion that the US terror suspect was scouting
only the Jewish targets including the El Al airlines office here.
Headley had carried out reconnaissance of
the office of Israeli airlines El AI located at Cuffe Parade in Mumbai in
March this year before moving to the national capital where he chose to stay
in a small hotel in Paharganj area. The security agencies carried out the
recce of the area and found a Chabad House, barely 300 metres from the hotel
De Holiday Inn.
From Delhi, Headley travelled to Pushkar in
the outskirts of Ajmer in Rajasthan where he insisted on a room opposite a
Jewish prayer centre claiming he was a Jew and wanted 'holy sight'
After staying there for three days, Headley
moved to Goa where he stayed at a guest house located in Anjuna village along
the coast of Arabian sea before proceeding towards Pune where he scouted the
area around Koregaon Park. Headley, who was born to a Pakistani father and
whose earlier name was Daood Gilani, has been charged by the FBI with conspiring
in the audacious Mumbai attack of last year which left over 160 people, including
six foreigners, dead.
On the Indian side, the National Investigating
Agency
(NIA), which was formed in the aftermath of
26/11, was probing the role of Headley and his Pakistani Canadian accomplice
Tahawwur Rana.
