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ShareBangalore: Although the city police have no clue if David Coleman Headley and Tahawwur Hussain Rana had stayed in any of the hotels in the city, they suspect that they might have passed off as tourists and put up with some contacts in Bangalore before setting out for Goa and then Mumbai.
"This happened because the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which currently has the two in their custody, started keeping an eye on them only after the Mumbai attacks. The two might have arrived here and then left without anybody noticing," a source in the city police said.
Stating that hotel registers are monitored from time to time, police commissioner Shankar M Bidari said that there is no recorded information on their arrival and departure from the city.
However, police sources said that if the two had stayed in the city as 'guests' of local contacts, they could have easily escaped notice. "There are many tourists from other countries, including the US, who come and go without being watched. It is compulsory only for Pakistanis to report to the jurisdictional Foreigners' Registration Office (FRO) once they arrive here, whether they are on tourist visa or not. Even persons who are on medical visas sometimes need not register themselves with the FRO, if their stay is much less than the 180 days' cut-off period," a police officer said, quoting the guidelines for foreigners' stay in the country.
Intelligence sources and National Investigation Agency personnel are now trying to piece together confessional statements and other records of the police probe into the July 25, 2008 Bangalore blasts to check if he was present in the city before that year.
"We cannot say for sure that they were here (Bangalore), but the truth will be revealed only after we go through scores of documents pertaining to the investigation. We expect the picture to become clear once Riaz Bhatkal, mastermind of the July 2008 serial bomb blasts in Bangalore, and his associates in the Indian Mujahiddin such as CAM Basheer are caught. We are also trying to apprehend Ali, an Omani national who funded the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, so we can get more information on Headley and Rana's visits to the city," sources said.
Police, however, said that the arrest of Sarfaraz Nawaz, a native of Perumbavoor in Kerala, from Muscat in March this year did not yield much information on the Bangalore blasts and the persons behind them. "We are currently trying to find out more on Headley and Rana's influence in India and the manner in which they travelled to arrive here. Though there are clues that go to show that they have local contacts, we have no idea who they met here in the city. There is no way they can operate in this country without having local contacts," they added.
