The sister (left) and sister-in-law of the two arrested brothers, Faisal and Muzammil Shaikh, inside Tirupati Apartments at Mira Road on Friday. (Left) UNRAVELING THE PLOT: The police are clubbing together vital clues in the blast case
Mateen Hafeez I TNN
Mumbai: Anti-national elements from across the border were using Faisal Shaikh to maim the state financially and politically.
Insisting that Faisal was the “key western India operative’’ of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, police officials told TOI on Friday that he was under orders to gather as much information as possible about the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), the big business centres, major BPOs and also a Maharashtra minister and a top politician from Gujarat. The information would have been used for major terror strikes, officials added.
Faisal and his brother Muzammil—the latter was picked up from Bangalore where he was working with a top-bracket software firm—were produced in the Mazgaon court on Friday and remanded to police custody until August 9.
Officials also revealed to TOI on Friday that Faisal was the first person they had picked up after the blasts on July 11. “But we realised how big a catch he was only after others started talking,’’ a senior official said.
Faisal’s family, which lived in Nagpada until 1996, moved to Pune after that, buying a flat in Kondhwa. It was there that Faisal came in touch with Sohail Shaikh, a member of the Students’ Islamic Movement of India, who was arrested a few days ago.
Faisal later introduced Sohail to his brother, Muzammil.
Investigators said Faisal spilled the beans on Sohail’s involvement after being picked up but kept mum about Muzammil—it was Sohail who told investigators that Muzammil, too, was very much part of the terror net. All three then sang about Tanvir, who was the first person to be arrested from Mumbai, and the doctor led investigators to Worli resident Zameer Shaikh.
Faisal is an expert at making bombs
Mateen Hafeez and Siddhartha D Kashyap | TNN
Mumbai/Pune: The Mumbai police seem to sniffing out the terror plot bit by bit. “It was a case of verifying and corroborating the statements of all the accused that helped us get an idea of the conspiracy,’’ an investigator said, adding that five to six more LeT operatives were still on the run.
But officials said they were still to establish a link between this module (Faisal and Muzammil Shaikh, Tanvir Ansari, Sohail and Zameer) and the three others arrested (Mumtaz Chaudhri, Kamal Ansari and Khalid Shaikh).
Investigations have revealed that Faisal, who owns a Mira Road flat, also has a rented flat on Perry Cross Road in Bandra (W). That flat could have been used by him and his co-conspirators to hatch the Terror Tuesday plot. Officials are now looking for one of Faisal’s aides, identified as Sajid.
Most instructions to the Faisal-led module could come from Azam Chima, ISI operative and militant trainer at the LeT’s Bahawalpur camp in PoK, the officials said. Faisal, Muzammil and arrested unani physician Tanvir Ansari were trying to recruit more boys and increase the number of terror sympathisers, they added.
Officials said Faisal was an expert in making bombs and was given the code names of Abu Aamin and Abu Musthaque at the Pakistan terror camp.
“Even in Mumbai, although they knew each other’s real names, they would use the codes whenever they spoke to each other. All of them had mobile phones but would mostly use PCOs,’’ an official said.
The investigation, intelligence officials said, received another fillip with key terror operative Mujaheed Geelani “turning himself in’’ to the police on Friday. The ATS, however, chose to stay silent on this issue.
Geelani, intelligence officials said, was seen in Pune on the day of the blasts and went underground after that. Geelani, now being interrogated in Mumbai, could provide vital clues, they added.
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