Sources have said that the serial train blasts case had heavily exposed Azam Cheema, leading to him being shunted out.
Even nine years after the serial train blasts that rocked the financial capital, the police haven't been able to gather much information about the "Pakistani suspects" allegedly involved in the case. All they could garner from their intelligence network was that mastermind of the blasts, Lashkar-e-Taiba's (LeT's) commander and then in-charge of India operations, was removed from the position as he had been exposed and further association on his part with future operations could have created problems for the terror outfit, said sources from the state Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS).
Sources added that the serial train blasts case had heavily exposed Azam Cheema, leading to him being shunted out. "Our intelligence has revealed that Cheema has been given some trivial work by the LeT. His name had cropped up in almost all terror attacks in Mumbai before the train blasts," an officer said.
According to sources who were part of the investigation, following the arrest of the module involved in the blasts, it was revealed that Pakistanis had sneaked into the country at least a fortnight before the terror act. "While six Pakistanis had sneaked in from Bangladesh border, two had sneaked in from the Nepal border and four from the Kutch border," said an ATS officer.
During the probe, the police could only identify aliases of the Pakistanis — Aslam, Hafizullah, Sabir, Abu Bakr, Kasam Ali, Ammu Jaan, Ehsanullah, Abu Hasan, Abdul Rehman, Salim and Abu Umaid alias Abu Osama alias Mohammad Ali. They also found out that Abu Umaid was a resident of Chak in Faisalabad area of Pakistan. Salim had died in one of the blasts as he had not been able to come out of the crowded train, the police said.
"All such operatives are given different names and we came across theirs from their Indian associates. We managed to find out that the Pakistanis were from Lahore, Rawalpindi, Faisalabad and Bahawalpur. We had no other means to verify their details and hence they remain wanted in the case," said the officer.
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