G Parthasarathy
Zakiur Rahman Lakhvi is a household name in India. The 46-year-old Lakhvi has been the operation commander and a member of the decision-making general council of Lashkar e Taiba for nearly a decade. He rose rapidly in LeT after the Kargil conflict and has organised Lashkar terrorist operations not only against India, but also in Afghanistan, Chechnya and Bosnia. He is known to have been the mastermind not just of the 26/11 Mumbai terrorist attack, but also the 2006 Mumbai train bombing in which around 200 people perished.
According to the testimony during the trials of Syed Yousuf Gilani, aka David Coleman Headley, and his Canadian buddy, Tahawur Rana, in Chicago, Headley revealed how he was tasked by Lakhvi to identify and photograph targets for the 26/11 attack. Lakhvi's pernicious role has been exposed in testimony in India by an Indian national from Maharashtra, Syed Zabiuddin Ansari, aka Abu Jundal. Ansari was a member of the ISI-backed Indian Mujahideen and became an active Lashkar member after finding his way to Karachi. He was tasked by Lakhvi to teach the ten terrorists to speak Hindi. Ansari was extradited from Saudi Arabia to India in 2012 on the basis of information provided by India and the US. He has confirmed that he was in the operations room near Karachi, where Lakhvi was giving minute-to-minute operational instructions to the ten terrorists in Mumbai. Voice samples of VOIP communications by Lakhvi with the terrorists have been provided to Pakistan. They have not been used as evidence in Pakistan. Kasab, who referred to Lakhvi as “chacha” (uncle), also gave a sworn testimony on Lakhvi’s role.
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