New Delhi:
Abu Jundal, the 26/11 handler who has been arrested for his role in the Mumbai attacks in 2008, continues to provide India with vital details about how the massacre was planned and executed.
Here are the top 10 developments in this case:
Jundal whose real name is Syed Zabiuddin Ansari, has said that after 26/11, Pakistan's military intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), destroyed the control room in Karachi where he was based.
It was from here that he says he provided, along with five other 'handlers", instructions to the ten young men who fanned out across Mumbai to attack landmarks like the city's main train station and the Taj hotel. Jundal has said that ISI officers ran the control room along with senior Lashkar commander, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi.
Indian intelligence agencies believe Jundal was the highest-ranked Indian in the Lashkar-e-Taiba group.
Pakistan yesterday dismissed India's contention that Jundal's details prove that Pakistani state actors were involved in 26/11. Pakistani minister Rehman Malik said that Jundal is Indian, and said India had failed to "control its own citizens." Sources say the government will not respond to Pakistan's request for sharing information. Sources also say that Zabiuddin possessed a Pakistani passport and two Pakistani identity cards which indicate Pakistan's complicity.
Jundal is from Beed in Maharashtra. He was tracked to Saudi Arabia a year ago by Indian and US intelligence officials, after he placed a call to Pakistan that was intercepted. India gave Saudi Arabia DNA samples of his family members to prove that he is an Indian citizen and should be deported.
But in Beed today, his mother, Rehana Begum, said that neither her husband nor she had submitted DNA samples to Indian officials.
Jundal escaped from India to Bangladesh in 2006 as authorities were looking for him and others who were allegedly transporting a huge stash of RDX and AK47s in Aurangabad.
Jundal has said that before that, he travelled to Kathmandu in 2005 where he was trained to handle arms and explosives. He then returned to India and helped plan a bomb blast in 2006 at the railway station in Ahmedabad.
Pakistan had told India formally that a man named Abu Hamza had been arrested as a part of its investigation into 26/11. Pakistan says the man in Indian custody is not the same Jundal.
Jundal has reportedly said that he met with the ten terrorists who attacked Mumbai twice before 26/11. He taught them Hindi, and helped familiarize them with the city's landscape. After the first 24 hours in the control room, he was asked to "take rest" and was removed.
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