Terror talent wanted for riot revenge

The relief camps where the victims of the post-Godhra riots of 2002 were taken for their safety were the focus of David Headley and Tahawwur Hussain Rana’s recruitment drive for Lashkar-e-Toiba’s terror campaign against India. Sources in the police department said that the two LeT operatives had reportedly visited some rehabilitation camps in Danilimda.

However, the police are yet to identify someone from Danilimda or any other part of the city, who had met Headley or Rana at the relief camps. The exact weeks or months in which the duo visited the relief camps are also not known.

DNA had earlier warned that, in the absence of speedy justice, the relief camps which housed riot victims seething with desire for revenge, and the neglected Muslim ghettoes of Ahmedabad, could become fertile ground for terrorism.

The sources said that, during their visit to the city, Headley and Rana had tried to take advantage of the simmering anger among youths of the minority community who were ‘desperate for revenge’.

The two terrorists were allegedly looking for youths who had not yet decided on a revenge plan. According to reports, Headley and Rana had offered the angry youths a lavish lifestyle in Canada even as they prepared to avenge the the 2002 bloodbath. He gave them the example of his own life in Canada and is reported to have told the youths that if they agreed to work with him, they, too, would live comfortably in Canada. The sources said Headley and Rana had also met some people who had migrated to Danilimda from other parts of the city. “During his visit, he preferred to contact youths who had suffered tragic losses in the riots,” a source said. The aim of the interviews that Headley and Rana organised in the city, ostensibly for jobs in foreign countries, was also the same — to recruit youths among riot victims who were willing to work for the LeT.

However, no officer of the Gujarat police could confirm about these meetings in the city.