Handler’s disclosures may be face-saver for CBI

The brow-beaten crime branch now expects to wipe off some of its earlier embarrassment if Abu Jundal names the local hands involved in the 26/11 Mumbai attacks.

The brow-beaten crime branch now expects to wipe off some of its earlier embarrassment if Abu Jundal names the local hands involved in the 26/11 Mumbai attacks.

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The crime branch had to face embarrassment after it named Fahim Ansari and Sabauddin Ahmed as the local hands in the terror plot, saying they had allegedly provided logistical support to the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) to launch the attack. The special 26/11 court and later the Bombay High Court acquitted the duo on account of insufficient evidence.

A crime branch official said since Jundal was a key recruiter of Indian members into the LeT fold and one of the handlers of the terrorists during the 26/11 attack, he could well be a coordinator for the 10-member group (who were involved in the 26/11 attack) during their movement in a foreign country (India). “There could well be a Plan-B for those terrorists in case of an emergency and Jundal might have kept his men ready for providing shelter or an escape route to them,” the official said, adding the police would now plan to identify and bust the network of the LeT operative and sympathiser-base from Jundal’s revelations.

Crime branch sources said they were aware that Jundal was in touch with a few of his mates, and they were proceeding on this line of investigation during his stay in Pakistan from 2006-2011 where he even worked on construction sites as an electrician. Jundal, according to sources, had helped in the recruitment of Himayat Baig, an Indian Mujahideen (IM) operative, who has now been arrested in Pune’s German bakery blast.

“We are also looking at the possibility of Jundal having participated in other terror activities apart from the four known cases registered against him in the state,” a source said.