The David Coleman Headley — suspected to have made several trips to India in the run up to the November 26, 2008 Mumbai terror attack — saga is getting both more curious and more intriguing, with ever more darker hints about what is yet to be revealed.
It is not surprising that New Delhi is discomfited by the fact that it has not been able to interrogate the man who could prove crucial for the Ajmal Kasab trial as well as the unraveling of the attack, and that his visa papers are 'missing' from the Indian consulate office in Chicago.
The Indian ineptitude at the consulate and at the intelligence agencies at home is shocking even if not extraordinary. Foreign secretary Nirupama Rao put a brave face on it when quizzed about the visa records but that convinced no one.
India still hopes to get help from the American side to get to Headley as well as all the information that FBI interrogation has yielded so far. Clearly, the Americans are not sharing most of the information that they have about the man. It is this aspect that should be a matter of worry.
It is not so because India-US relations are not as close or as smooth that they are made out to be by the Manmohan Singh government, but because of the possibility that Headley could have been working for American intelligence agencies before he turned rogue. He could have turned rogue for his own fundamentalist reasons. The implications however are dire. Americans may want to argue that Headley and others like him were used to infiltrate the jihadi groups, but it may not be the whole story.
The possible involvement of American 'operatives' with some of the jihadis to serve the US geo-political strategies should be of great concern to Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and other central Asian states like Uzbekistan and others. Even independent strategy experts in the US would not be willing to follow up on this clue. It is a known fact that in the complex American political and defence edifice, many people and organisations are working at cross-purposes.
As a consequence, the US would have neither credibility nor moral authority to exhort Pakistan's army and ISI not to flirt with fundamentalists if some of its own agencies are doing the same. There is reason to suspect that Headley may have much to reveal that could clearly embarrass his American handlers. It is necessary for both Americans and Indians to get to the bottom of the Headley tale.
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