The Mumbai mystery -- From a robbery to hijack plot

The Mumbai mystery -- From a robbery to hijack plot
J DEY

MUMBAI, Jan 6: Two of the four ``ISI operatives'' whose interrogation apparently forms a key part of the Home Ministry's evidence were arrested in Mumbai ostensibly in connection with a bank robbery. Even today, a senior police officer said that these men had nothing to do with the hijacking.

On December 30, 1999, a team of the special branch of Mumbai police arrested these two men out to rob a bank. The police recovered two AK-56 assault rifles, nine pistols, five hand-grenades, and four TNT anti-tank shells. No doubt, rather excessive ammunition for a bank robbery. But Mumbai police commissioner Ronnie Mendonca was categorical in saying that the men had been arrested in connection with a bank robbery.

Then word leaked out that two other men had been arrested and that the group was actually acting on behalf of a Taliban militant, an alleged associate of Osama bin Laden. The Taliban militant was identified as a certain Abu Ahmed.When higher-ups in the police realised that the media had got wind of thisthere were calls to editors to ``please hold the story.'' Most newspapers, including The Indian Express, went ahead with the story. Sources said a senior police official was pulled by his superiors for ``leaking'' this story. Why were the police being so secretive? In response, the only thing that Mendonca had to say at the Mumbai police's Crime Review '99 was that the agents, who were being interrogated under judicial custody, were ISI men. To all other queries, he had a stock answer: ``These are operational details which cannot be divulged.''

Even today when Advani was talking about the arrested men's links with hijackers, Mumbai police stuck to their old line.

Mendonca declined to comment. Another senior police officer denied the arrested men's involvement in the hijacking but said they had come here to set up a base for the Harkat-ul-Ansar. ``Mr Advani must have access to intelligence that we are not aware of,'' said the officer.