Life lost in jail

Police investigation”, he added.

In response to a specific question on whether, then, “no one proposed that investigation be reopened in the earlier cases on the basis of the new evidence”, Chidambaram said: “You can’t say that, either. I cannot recall after five years”.

Three separate Intelligence Bureau officials said the Ministry of Home Affairs had been made aware of new evidence flowing from the Indian Mujahideen case but underlined that neither the Minister nor other top officials were specifically asked to push for the earlier prosecutions to be reviewed.

“Let’s put it this way”, one top Intelligence Bureau official said, “we didn’t think it was our business to have a point of view, and no one asked us to have one anyway. It was up to the state police forces to do what they wished”.

“The implications of the new evidence were huge”, said a senior Andhra Pradesh Police official, “and someone should have acted. It basically meant that police in three states had fabricated evidence against innocents. No one wanted to confront this issue”.

What the secret dossier reveals

In its dossier, the Andhra Pradesh Police said that suspects had revealed, during interrogation, that the Delhi bombings had been carried out by Atif Amin, the alleged Indian Mujahideen chief killed at Batla House on September 19, 2008. “Atif went to Delhi on the pretext of studies”, the dossier states, “and took one small flat in the Jasola area and started staying there. He used to regularly come to Azamgarh. Once, he met Sadiq (Sheikh) and told him that he made some plans for carrying out blasts in Delhi”.

Later, the dossier states, Sheikh met with Amin, and the actual attack team — alleged Indian Mujahideen operatives Mirza Shadab Beig, Mohammad Shakeel and Saqib Nisar.

Theimprovisedexplosivedevices,itstates, had already been prepared by Arif Badr, the group’s alleged bomb-making expert, who is charged with having trained in Pakistan.

“Atif kept the pressure-cooker bomb in Paharganj.” the dossier says, “Shadab kept the pressure cooker bomb in Sarojini Nagar market, while Shakeel and Saqib in Govindpuri”.

Though the Andhra Pradesh Police was the only force to document its findings on letterhead, the Intelligence Bureau kept plain-paper records of interrogations with identical findings, government sources said. The Gujarat Police also videotaped its interviews with key suspects, notably Sadiq Sheikh, which affirmed these findings — though confession testimony to police is not, under Indian law, admissible as evidence.

Forensic findings recorded in the Andhra Pradesh dossier, though, independently underlines what it was told by suspects.

The Delhi IEDS, it notes, used a Samaybrandquartzalarmclocklinkedtoa9-voltbattery connected to twin detonators, the same mechanism as in all subsequent Indian Mujahideendevicesexceptthoseusedinsurat on July 26, 2008. In each case, the bomb-fabricatorusedbandedred-yellow-brownwirefor the positive connection, and white-black wire for the negative terminal.

In its report, the Andhra Pradesh Police noted that the “timer expert of the Indian Mujahideen experimented with Ajanta clocks, digital clocks, and China watches. All failed. (The) Samay watch experiment turned out to be successful”.

This, the dossier explains, was because “in the Samay watches, a small open portion was available (which allowed) the alarm connection (to be) cut and direct connection could be given to the detonators”. It contains detailed circuit drawings for the devices, illustrating the common design features.

Intelligence services concluded that the 9 kg of pentaerythritol tetranitrate used in Delhi — packed in two pressure cookers and an aluminium lunch box — was part of a consignment brought into India by Harkat-uljihad-e-islami operative Jalaluddin Mollah.

Tracking the real perpetrators

Mollah had told investigators he had handed over the explosives near Delhi’s Jama Masjid to an operative he knew by the codename “Rocky”. The Intelligence Bureau established that “Rocky” was in fact Atif Amin, sources said. However, the Delhi Police and Uttar Pradesh Police forces never brought this information on to the legal record, allowing their prosecutions to proceed.

Tariq Dar, trial documents show, was arrested after surveillance mounted on satellite phone connections used by the Lashkar-etaiba showed he had called Mazhar Iqbal, a key Pakistan-based commander also known by the code-name Abu Al-qama, to claim credit for the attack.

Based on Dar’s testimony, Shah and Fazili were arrested — even though there was no corroborative evidence and documents showed that the suspects could not have been in Delhi on the day of the attack.

“It was a hideous investigation”, says an officer familiar with the case. “Dar was trying to cash in on the news, and it set off a whole series of tragic events — the worst of which was that everyone stopped looking for the real perpetrators. You see this in each of the early Indian Mujahideen cases”.

Following bomb-making Arif Badr’s training in Pakistan, the dossier states, he met frequently with Amin and Sadiq Sheikh at his store in Saraimeer to plan their first attack, using these explosives. The explosive would continue to be used until the Delhi strike, after which, their PETN supplies exhausted, the group would turn to contacts in south India to secure supplies of ammonium nitriate, the dossier says.

The dossier goes on: “Arif Badr and Atif made two bombs. Atif and (alleged Indian Mujahideen operative) Dr. Shahnawaz (Alam) planted these two bombs as Dasaswamedh Ghat”.

In the telling of Uttar Pradesh prosecutors, though, the pressure-cooker IEDS were stored at Waliullah’s home before being planted at the Dasaswamedh Ghat by Bangladeshi nationals working for the Harkat-ul-jihad-e-islami.

The trial concluded in August, 2008, before the new evidence became available, but the Uttar Pradesh government has not since reopened the case in the light of the new evidence.

Mumbai’s Anti-terrorism Squad, The Indian Express reported last year after death sentences were handed down in the 2006 serial bombing case, had interrogated key suspect Sadiq Sheikh, and concluded that the Indian Mujahideen had, in fact, carried out the strike.

However, the police’s Crime Branch, which carried out the earlier investigation, stuck by its version of events, and concluded Sheikh had made up his testimony to shield the real perpetrators. No independent review of the evidence, based on the forensic data contained in the Andhra Pradesh Police’s dossier, was ordered by the state government.