Pakistani investigator who has led the probe into the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks has said that the sleuths uncovered a raft of evidence linking the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) to the carnage that was “planned and launched” from the Pakistani soil. Tariq Khosa, said that Pakistan has to deal with the fallout of the attacks and this will require “facing the truth and admitting mistakes”.

"Pakistan has to deal with the Mumbai mayhem, planned and launched from its soil," Tariq Khosa, a former director general of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), wrote in the Dawn newspaper. "The entire state security apparatus must ensure that the perpetrators and masterminds of the ghastly terror attacks are brought to justice."

The training camp near Thatta in Sindh province, where the LeT terrorists were trained and launched by sea was identified and secured by the investigators. The casings of the explosive devices used in Mumbai were recovered from the same training camp and duly matched, Khosa  said.

The fishing trawler used by the attackers for hijacking an Indian trawler, in which they sailed to Mumbai, was brought back to a Pakistani harbour, and then painted and concealed. But it was recovered by the investigators and connected to the accused, Khosa wrote in the Dawn newspaper.

Ajmal Kasab, the lone attacker captured and subsequently executed in India, after his conviction, was a Pakistani national whose place of residence, initial schooling and his joining a banned militant group was established by investigators, he said.

The engine of the dinghy abandoned by the terrorists near the Mumbai harbour “contained a patent number through which the investigators have traced that it is imported from Japan to Lahore and then to a Karachi sports shop from where a LeT-linked militant purchased it along with the dinghy”, he added.

The money trail was followed and the accused who bought the engine was arrested. The “ops room” in Karachi, from where the attackers were directed, was identified and secured by investigators. Communications through voice over internet protocol (VoIP) were unearthed, Khosa said.

The alleged commander, Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi and his deputies were identified and arrested and a couple of foreign-based financiers and facilitators were arrested and brought to face trial, he wrote.

Khosa acepted that the trial of the seven men charged for the attacks had “lingered on for far too long” and Pakistan must ensure the “perpetrators and masterminds are brought to justice”. He added that “dilatory tactics by the defendants, frequent change of trial judges and assassination of the case prosecutor as well as retracting from original testimony by some key witnesses” all had been the serious setbacks for Pakistani prosecutors.

The retired official has said that the Mumbai case was unique and that proving conspiracy in a different jurisdiction is more complex and required a far superior quality of evidence. "Therefore, the legal experts from both sides need to sit together rather than sulk and point fingers." Khosa asked, "Are we as a nation prepared to muster the courage to face uncomfortable truths and combat the demons of militancy that haunt our land?"

Now, it is the turn of Pakistan to deny all these allegations and paint the investigator Khosa as an agent of RAW. Pakistan is a rogue state which is a haven to the terrorist. The Pakistan Army and ISI are the host and trainer of the terrorists. The time is now ripe to term Pakistan as a terrorist friendly nation and impose sanctions against the rogue state.

By Premji