Where Headley went, terror struck

Call it a bizarre coincidence but investigators are beginning to suspect an eerie connection between the timing of David Coleman Headley’s India visits and the series of bomb blasts and terror strikes that rocked the country between 2006 and 2008.

A majority of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) operative’s visits to India  coincided with the attacks, which took place either just after he left the country, or just prior to his arrival. He was in the country in 2008, when bomb blasts had rocked Ahmedabad and Bangalore.

Sources say that many within the establishment are beginning to wonder why immigration authorities did not question Headley’s movements at the time. He had often entered India through, as well as exited from the country to, Pakistan. His immigration forms were not properly filled on some occasions while, on others, his place of stay was marked incorrectly. “All this should have raised questions. But I suppose his American name was a great cover,” says one officer.

The bomb blasts in New Delhi on the eve of Diwali in 2005 seemed to have been the starting point for a series of terror strikes in major cities in India. Subsequently, the number of major attacks outside of Jammu & Kashmir began to gain momentum and peaked with the Mumbai attacks last year in November.

Now, almost a year after the 26/11 carnage, and with several new angles to LeT operations emerging afresh after the arrest of Headley and his associate Tahawwur Hussain Rana, sources are beginning to take a deeper look into the movements of the duo in South Asia.

Headley’s first trip to India was on a US passport 097536400, after he changed his name from Daood Gilani, on September 14. He came in from Karachi to Mumbai, and stayed for three months.

Six days before he landed, Malegaon was ripped apart by a series of blasts that killed 37 people. The police claim it was a LeT-SIMI plot.

The next time Headley landed in Mumbai was on February 22, 2007, just three days after the Samjhauta Express train blast. While the perpetrators of the blast remain a mystery, there has been evidence to point fingers at both Islamic terrorists as well as Hindu fringe groups.

His next visit lasted 53 days, after he landed in Mumbai from Colombo. Headley thereafter returned to Mumbai from Dubai on May 17. A day after he left, a blast took place at the Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad during Friday prayers.

In May-June 2007, Headley spent 18 days in Mumbai, coming in via Dubai. There were no immediate attacks but, three months later, Hyderabad is hit again, this time with three explosions that kill over 40 people. Intelligence agencies had then pointed fingers at the LeT-HUJI network in which Hyderabad resident Shahid Bilal was a key player. A few years before the blast, Bilal had gone to Pakistan where he emerged as a key terror player and helped LeT-HUJI recruit youngsters from Andhra Pradesh and elsewhere. Bilal was mysteriously shot dead a few months later in Karachi.

Headley visited Mumbai twice in the September-November 2007 period. Once, he came in from Dubai and the second time from Lahore to Delhi, and returning to Lahore subsequently. Investigators believe that it was during those trips that Headley may have started recording the targets and making other preparations for the 26/11 attacks - that is, if he was a part of the conspiracy.

Increasingly, Headley had also started coming into India directly from Pakistan, not via Dubai or any other stop.

Headley next arrived in Mumbai in April 2008, just for six days. Within a month of his leaving, serial blasts rocked Jaipur on May 13.

The next trip, lasting a month in July 2008, saw two serial blasts rocking the country. First, on July 25, a series of small bombs rock Bangalore, and the attack remained a mystery for long. In recent times, the Bangalore police have claimed that it was the handiwork of a group of Islamic terrorists and was planned in Kerala.

A day later, over 15 bombs went off in Ahmedabad, killing almost 50 people. The Indian Mujahideen, a shadow terror group, challenged the government to stop them in an email sent minutes before the attack.

Two months later, Delhi was shaken by serial blasts on September 13.

Months later, Tahawwur Hussain Rana landed in India, on November 12, 2008 on a business visa that was valid until the 30th of last month. He and his wife visited Kochi among other places and left via Dubai for Chicago on November 21. Five days later, the 10 terrorists landed in Mumbai to carry out the 26/11 mayhem.

Sources in the security establishment are still struggling to figure out what exactly were Rana and Headley up to. Was is just a reccee or were they recruiting foot-soldiers for terrorist strikes?