NEW DELHI, Nov 29: Nine Pakistan-based Jihadi terrorists were involved in the attacks on Mumbai`s commuter trains in July, India's National Security Adviser M. K. Narayanan said on Wednesday.
“The investigation into this incident is complete, and the involvement of nine Pakistan-based Jihadi terrorists, of whom one died, has been confirmed in the investigation,” he told an international seminar here on “Growing challenges of terrorism with special reference to railways”.
Mr Narayanan's comments were a departure from his remarks some weeks ago that the Mumbai police did not offer any clinching evidence to show a Pakistan link in the terror attack that killed 200 commuters on July 11.
On Wednesday, he told the seminar that more than 20 Indians involved in carrying out the attacks were arrested and charge-sheeted, but eight Pakistanis managed to escape to their country.
Indian and Pakistani foreign secretaries discussed the issue during the recent talks here, but Delhi did not present any evidence to Islamabad, saying the case had to be first presented to a judge.
Mr Narayanan said investigations had revealed that the alleged Pakistanis came to India through three different routes — Bangladesh, Nepal and the sea —and were directly involved in planting the bombs.
The explosives were stored in a residential suburb in Mumbai and packed into pressure cookers before being placed in first-class train compartments. A great deal of “advance planning and careful preparation” had gone into the attacks that were masterminded “by well-known Jihadi leaders in Pakistan like Azam Cheema,” he said.
Intelligence experts had pieced together the information obtained from the train bombings to reach a “conclusion about the existence of a common thread linking attacks on mass transport networks, such as the Mumbai blasts, with targeted attacks on religious places like Varanasi and the Ram Janmbhoomi complex” and the blast in Delhi’s Sarojini Nagar Market.
