India’s 26/11 response packed with primary documents

NEW DELHI: India’s response to a Pakistani questionnaire on November’s attacks in Mumbai runs to over 400 pages — almost six times as long as an dossier of evidence released in January.

Prepared in response to 30 investigation-related queries prepared by Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency, India’s textual response runs to just a few pages — and follows the contours of details published earlier this week in The Hindu.

However, the document contains voluminous appendices, which include five compact discs and over 400 pages of primary documentation.

Bar a copy of arrested Lashkar terrorist Mohammad Ajmal Amir’s confessional statement to a Mumbai judge — a document that India says can only be obtained through legal processes — Pakistani investigators have been given every primary investigative document available with the Mumbai police.

Electronic data

Most significant among them, from the point of view of Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency, are compact disks containing the conversations between the Lashkar fidayeen and their controllers in Pakistan. Rather than provide a transcript, India has chosen to hand over full audio in the hope the FIA will match the voices with those of Lashkar commanders held by Pakistan.

In addition, the appendices to India’s response contains a detailed forensic analysis of the Thuraya satellite phone recovered from the terrorists, which runs into over a hundred pages. The response also contains an appendix detailing the call data records of the mobile phones used by the terrorists during the assault.

Electronic headers of an e-mail sent by the Lashkar, claiming responsibility for the attack on behalf of a fictitious group have also been provided. Delivered to the television station India TV, the e-mail has been established to have been sent by the Lashkar using a hacked Moscow-registered server.

Digital maps and data obtained from the Global Position System units used by the terrorists are also provided in appendices to the response. Pakistan’s queries on batteries used to power the GPS sets have been met with a detailed list of the internal and external batteries found by the Mumbai police.

India’s response also provides a wealth of information on the perpetrators themselves.

Modalities

Four compact discs of closed-circuit video tape are annexed to the response, which will allow FIA investigators to gain a sense of the actual modalities of the attack. Photographs of nine of the 10 perpetrators are also attached, with a note stating that one body was too badly mutilated during the fighting to enable a clear facial image to be obtained.

Tailoring labels on the perpetrators’ clothes, as requested by Pakistan, as well as a Mumbai police documentation of material recovered from the terrorists, are contained in the annexures.

No effort has been made to conceal gaps in the forensic trail. For example, India’s response contains the fingerprints of only eight of the 10 terrorists involved in the Mumbai attack. Two bodies, the response states, were too badly burned for fingerprints to be recovered.

However, one full annexure is devoted to the DNA profiles of the terrorists, which the FIA will be able to match with their next-of-kin in Pakistan.

Mumbai police forensic experts were also unable to recover fingerprints from the weapons used by the terrorists, because of contamination during their recovery after their fire-engagements with the National Security Guard. But the response does contain the details of a fingerprint recovered from the hijacked fishing boat used by the terrorists to land in Mumbai.

In addition, the appendices include photographs of the weapons used by the terrorists and engravings on an outboard engine used to power a dinghy used by one group of terrorists.

Words of rebuttal

Although India’s response avoids polemical language, it does rebut two un-numbered queries added to the end of the 30-point questionnaire drafted by FIA detectives.

Pakistan had asked for details on the death of Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad chief Hemant Karkare, linking it to an ongoing investigation of the Hindutva terror group Abhinav Bharat and the firebombing of the Samjhauta Express.

In response, India has made available testimony from Mumbai police officer Arun Jhadhav (spelt Jugdev in Pakistan’s questionnaire), which records in minute details of the firefight which led to Mr. Karkare’s death. India’s response flatly rejects claims that Mr. Karkare’s death was linked either to the ongoing trial of Lieutenant-Colonel Prasad Purohit for his alleged role in bombing a mosque in Malegaon, or the Samjhauta Express investigation.

Perhaps the only sharp words in India’s response to the questionnaire have been made in response to a second un-numbered claim, which asked for details of “linkages between a diamond merchant firm of Surat and some Hindus in Pakistan [and] alleged sponsoring of the Malegaon blast by the diamond merchant.”

India’s response dismisses the claimed linkage as a “figment of imagination.”