This is fantasy fiction. All of us have followed the life and times of the Mumbai attack mastermind, Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, the operational commander of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, the person Ajmal Kasab kept referring to as Zaki Chacha. From what we know, Zaki was involved in putting together and training the 10-member Lashkar team that was sent to wreak havoc on Mumbai after a three-month training. As the action unfolded, we know that there were as many as 284 calls on the cellphones that the terrorists carried through which the operations were directed: how to shoot the victims, when to throw a grenade, which hostage to shoot when. It was all micromanaged by Brother Wasif through his controllers. Our spooks listened to all the calls while they happened, once they were able to lock on to an Internet number in the US, through which the terrorists routed all the calls. All of us know that Zaki Chacha is the main man who should be brought to justice.
Instead, for eight years Zaki Chacha was lodged in a ‘prison’ where he was treated like a king: with Internet, mobile phones, and visitors had unlimited access to him at any time of the day or night any day of the week. Zaki Chacha had also unlimited access to his fourth wife through whom he fathered a progeny (his eighth) while in his luxury digs at government expense. So from all available accounts Zaki Chacha was actively doing whatever he had been doing before he was confined to this address. I am unfortunately not in a position to confirm whether he trained more Ajmal Kasabs inside prison premises, but I wouldn’t be surprised. We also know that the moment he was freed, he was taken to be with his wives at an undisclosed location. Beyond that, there is precious little that we know. Except for a line that Brother Wasif coached one of the Mumbai attackers to tell the Indian media: what India had witnessed was only the trailer, and that the real film was going to follow. In our experience, our terrorists usually walk free and get married and spawn new terrorist organisations. Remember Maulana Masood Azhar? Hint: IC 814.
Before that film comes, here are some filmy plots our spooks might like to idly toy with as they plan our policy on Pakistan. This is again based on popular lore that we have grown up on such as the kidnappings of Adolph Eichmann and Mordechai Vanunu. Eichmann, the man in charge of Hitler’s Final Solution, was traced to a suburb in Buenos Aires. A team of eight agents kidnapped him and kept him in a safe house for nine days till they established his identity, sedated him, bundled him into a plane and brought him to trial in Israel, following which he has hanged. Vanunu’s story was initially apocryphal. A whistle-blower who took pictures on the sly of Israel’s nuclear capabilities while a control room operator and who made a deal with a UK paper to publish the story, Israel’s spy network was on to him early on. He was honey-trapped in London, lured to Italy and there he was sedated, put inside a container and brought by ship to Israel. He spent a long time in prison and even now is fettered. Should we not be planning something like this for Zaki Chacha and Maulana Masood Azhar? Would Modi be up to commissioning this sort of thing? What do you think?
Sudarshan is the author of Anatomy of an Abduction: How the Indian Hostages in Iraq Were Freed
sudarshan@newindianexpress.com