Unlike Kasab, Jundal speaks in Hindi to cops

Interrogators in the Mumbai crime branch are comfortable while questioning Abu Jundal alias Zabiuddin Ansari, as he speaks both Hindi and Marathi.

Interrogators in the Mumbai crime branch are comfortable while questioning Abu Jundal alias Zabiuddin Ansari, as he speaks both Hindi and Marathi.

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The interrogators, it may be recalled, had a tough time while questioning captured Mumbai attacker Ajmal Amir Kasab, because he could speak fluently only in his native tongue, a dialect spoken in Multan.

Sources said Jundal is mostly being questioned in Hindi as he speaks the language well. Though he is a native of Beed district, he is not very fluent in Marathi. “His Marathi needs a little brushing up. He was in Pakistan from 2006 to 2011, and had not conversed in Marathi during that period,” sources said.

According to officials, Jundal studied in a zilla parishad school in Beed and completed his graduation there. He also enrolled for an MA in Hindi at KSK College in Beed, but dropped out after the first year.

Crime branch sources said they are likely to get extensive information about the reach of terror operatives in Maharashtra from Jundal, since he is from the state. “One of the biggest roles he played in the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) set-up in Pakistan was identifying young boys for indoctrination into terror activities,” sources said.