New Delhi, July 25 (IANS) Tahawwur Rana’s admission that he was present in Mumbai during the 26/11 attacks is just the tip of the iceberg.

In a recent admission, he told the Mumbai Crime Branch that he was in Mumbai to oversee the attack.

While the Mumbai Crime Branch is focusing mainly on Rana’s visits to the city, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) will go beyond the 26/11 attack. The NIA had unearthed that Rana had not just visited Mumbai, but other places in the country as well.

One of the key visits by Rana is the one he made to Kerala. Investigations suggest that this visit was made at the behest of Ilyas Kashmiri, the then-head of Al Qaeda’s 313 Brigade. Both Rana and his accomplice, David Headley, had a series of meetings with Kashmiri, during which the expansion plans for Jammu and Kashmir were discussed.

Preliminary investigations have revealed that Rana had visited Kerala on November 16, 2008, just ten days before the Mumbai attacks. He had told his interrogators that there was no specific reason for his visit to Kochi.

However, further investigations revealed that during his Kerala visit, he had called around 15 different numbers. There is no clarity as yet as to who Rana had called in Kerala, and the NIA is looking for answers. The probe is currently focused on the Mumbai attacks, and once the agencies are done with that, they will move on to the other aspects regarding Rana’s trips in India.

Based on the conversations that Headley had with Kashmiri, the agencies suspect that they were planning on recruiting from Kerala. The bigger plan was to reduce the number of Pakistani terrorists in Kashmir and recruit more from within the country.

Terrorists fighting in Kashmir are mainly recruited from either J&K or Pakistan. However, in 2008, there was a surprising development in Jammu and Kashmir, when in an encounter, four persons from Kerala were gunned down. The police said that those who were killed were Fayiz from Kannur, Abdul Rahim and Abdul Jabbar from Malappuram, and Yasin from Ernakulam. The probe found that all of them had been recruited and trained by the Lashkar-e-Taiba.

During the various conversations between Headley and Kashmir, Kerala finds a mention several times. Kashmiri at that time was planning his ambitious Ghazwa-e-Hind project, and to make that a success, he wanted to recruit from across India. He made a specific mention about Kerala since there was already a recruitment camp and massive network in northern Kerala, which was actively sending youth to Kashmir.

The investigators suspect that Rana’s visit to the state may have been part of this larger plan. Hence, to get details about the 15 calls he made while in the state is very crucial for the investigation and also to unveil the larger agenda of the Lashkar-e-Taiba.

The ISI has always wanted the J&K battle to be a localised one, and hence, recruiting from within India suited the spy agency. It wants to convey the picture that it is the Indians themselves who feel that J&K should not be part of India. Further, having Indians on the battlefield against their own forces also gives Pakistan the deniability factor.

The Kerala-Kashmir link has been probed in the past. While the smaller details have come out, the larger picture is yet to emerge. When the NIA questioned Headley, he mostly spoke about the Mumbai 26/11 attacks and the Pakistan link to it. He only divulged details that he had already given to the FBI following his arrest. Under the plea bargain deal he had entered into, he was required to reveal only what he had told the FBI.

However, in the case of Rana, there is no such deal in place. Hence, the NIA could dig beyond the Mumbai attacks. It would be crucial for the NIA to get more details about the Kerala module from Rana, since it would help uncover the larger network which was being controlled by Ilyas Kashmiri at the behest of the ISI.

–IANS

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