“Gifts from the Gulf” continued…

After about half an hour of waiting, our Consulate staff, accompanied by local plainclothes police officers attired in their traditional robes, asked us to follow them. We were taken to the Gulfstream, which had flown in from Delhi. My team members were asked to board the aircraft while I was asked to wait on the tarmac next to the Gulfstream. Not unlike a scene from a Bollywood film, a long luxury bus approached us leisurely from the far end of the tarmac. It shimmered in the hot April sun of the Gulf, much like a mirage in a desert would. When it came to a halt near our aircraft, two blindfolded men in handcuffs were escorted out. When their blindfolds were removed, Aftab Ansari and his Gujarati compatriot Raju Anadkat stood unveiled before me. Blinded in the sharp sunlight as the black scarves wrapped over their eyes were taken off, they both raised their handcuffed arms to block the rays of light falling on their eyes. On regaining focus they saw a surreal scene in front of them—plainclothes policemen all around and an aircraft in waiting. It took them some time to make sense of it all. They realized they were headed home to face the law of the country they belonged to. Their jaws dropped and a look of despair and despondency spread on their faces. They didn’t have the faintest idea that the morning of 10th February 2002 would bring them their doom.

Aftab, a bearded, barely five and a half feet tall, frail, pleasant and sophisticated looking 34-year old, was the complete anti-thesis of the persona anyone would conjure of a mafia don behind sensational kidnaps and terror strikes. Raju, on the other hand, with his robust build and scruffy face, looked every bit the crook we had known him to be. He was in a loose and crumpled white shirt with a grey pair of pants and seemed clearly sleep-deprived.

To be continued...