“Gifts from the Gulf" continues…

In one such camp, he had overheard that a module was being readied to attack the Indian Parliament. Rajkot Police shared the information with the concerned agency immediately but the input seems to have got lost somewhere in the maze of intelligence bureaucracy.

Asif made another startling revelation. His boss Aftab Ansari had paid $100,000 (then Rs 48 lakhs), out of the ransom money collected in the Burman kidnapping case, to Omar Sheikh which had later found its way to Mohammad Atta, the chief of 9/11 attackers. Aftab too had jehadi proclivities and had visited Lashkar Headquarters in Bahawalpur, Pakistan and met with Azam Cheema, the Launching Commander of LeT for India.

On December 7, 2001 Asif Raza Khan was killed in an encounter with the Rajkot Police when he tried to escape from their custody. Perceived as a fake encounter by Aftab Ansari and Amir Raza Khan (the younger brother of the slain criminal Asif), the incident was to set off a chain reaction in the nether world of organized crime and terror. The Indian Parliament was attacked less than a week later. Though the attack was executed by operatives of the Jaish e Mohammad, not directly connected with Aftab and Asif, it was the beginning of a decade of terror strikes by new jehadi groups who indeed owed their origin to the killing of Asif Raza Khan. One such incident was to take place a little over a month later.

To be continued…