Mumbai:
The Mumbai crime branch has written to the Maharashtra government seeking permission to interrogate Ajmal Kasab, the lone terrorist caught alive after the 26/11 Mumbai attacks of 2008.
Sources say the crime branch wants to confront Kasab with alleged 26/11handler Zaibuddin Ansari, who was deported to India after his arrest in Saudi Arabia in June this year.
Ansari or Abu Jundal, the alias he is believed to have used when he allegedly provided training to Kasab and the nine other men who attacked Mumbai. He has reportedly shared with interrogators details of ISI officers and top Lashkar leaders, who he says supervised the control room in Karachi from where he along with five other handlers instructed the 10 terrorists on the ground in Mumbai about how to strike.
Sources say the police want to have Kasab identify Ansari as Jundal, the 26/11 handler, and also want to study the differences and discrepancies in the accounts of the two men about the planning and execution of the 26/11 attack.
Ansari is suspected to have been involved in several other terror attacks and plans in India like the 2006 Aurangabad arms haul case and the 2010 German Bakery blast in Pune. He was in jail in Delhi for a month before being shifted to Mumbai on July 21 to be interrogated in the 26/11 case. His custody with the crime branch has been extended by a court till August 13. The crime branch wrote to the government last week, seeking to interrogate Kasab, the sources said.
Kasab is lodged in a bulletproof cell at Mumbai's Arthur Road jail.
During interrogation, Kasab had reportedly named Jundal among 13 Pakistani handlers who, he said, had come to see the 10 terrorists off as they boarded the Al Hussain, the Pakistani ship, in which they sailed from Karachi to Mumbai on November 23, 2008. Ansari has reportedly retracted a similar statement and said he did not go to see the 10 men off.
It was also Kasab who reportedly told interrogators that Jundal taught the terrorists Hindi and familiarised them with the parts of Mumbai. There are also reports that Jundal might have shared a room with Kasab and his fellow terrorists when they received training at a Lashkar e Taiba camp.