New Delhi:
When Indian intelligence officials managed to arrest key 26/11 planner, Abu Hamza aka Abu Jundal, they were determined to keep it a secret. Hamza was deported from Saudi Arabia, where he had been posted by terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba to find funds and recruits. There were other Lashkar members stationed in Saudi Arabia - men who had played key roles in terror attacks across India, including a series of blasts on local trains in Mumbai in 2006, in which 180 people were killed. To ensure these other Lashkar operatives were not tipped off, India moved quietly - so covertly, in fact, that the Ministry of External Affairs was not in the loop. The operation was handled entirely by the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Intelligence Bureau and the Research and Analysis Wing.
(Who is Abu Hamza?)Armed with DNA samples from his family members in Beed, Indian officials leaned hard on Saudi Arabia to hand over the terrorist. Pakistan's close ties with Saudi Arabia made this problematic. But the evidence appeared irrefutable -the DNA test added up, so did the voice samples from 26/11 that had Abu Hamza directing the 10 terrorists on what to do as they fanned out through Mumbai, attacking the city's landmarks.
(India's trail to Abu Hamza: Top 10 facts)Once Abu Hamza was brought to India, he was produced in a Delhi court where the Delhi police asked for his custody. But a court reporter of a Hindi daily got wind of the arrest and subsequent arrest warrant--allegedly from court sources. And India's secret was out.
Sources say that Abu Hamza has confessed that during 26/11, he was stationed in a Lashkar "control room." There, he has allegedly said, he reported directly to Zaki-ur-Rahman Lakhvi, the Pakistani Lashkar commander who coordinated the attack.