26/11: ‘LeT contact’ hunt leads to labour contractor

Patiala: On a day when it emerged that the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) commanders who planned the 26/11 Mumbai terror strikes had spoken to a drug smuggler in Punjab (who was also a police informer), on his mobile phone, the Punjab Police tracked the mobile number to a migrant from Bihar who has been working as a labour contractor in Rajpura for the past few months and picked him up for questioning.

However, the police were yet to conclusively ascertain whether this is the person the LeT cadres called a day before the Mumbai terror attack. Sources also confirmed that a joint team of intelligence agencies from Mumbai and the Intelligence Bureau headquarters in Delhi had come to Patiala a few months ago and made specific inquiries about the Punjab link to the case.
The mobile phone number 9815263211 was tracked down to 43-year-old Mohammad Rahim Khan by the Patiala Police on Friday. Khan, originally from Jogbani in Bihar, was picked up by the police in the afternoon. He was supplying labour for the past four months to Rajpura-based commission agents Suresh Kumar and Subhash Kumar, who have a shop in Rajpura's Anaj Mandi (grain market).

Claiming that he had this prepaid mobile connection with him for the past 2-3 years, Khan is learnt to have denied having ever received a call from abroad from anybody. He has also claimed that he has never been involved in any criminal activity and has never been arrested by police.
The Patiala police were trying to access the call detail record (CDR) of Khan's number to establish whether any such call was received prior to the attacks. "But since mobile phone companies don't have such old data readily available, it could take us some time," a senior police official said.

The Indian Express on Friday had reported that investigations into the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks had revealed that the LeT commanders who planned the attacks were in touch with a narcotics smuggler in Punjab in the days leading up to the attacks and had had two long telephone conversations with him through voice over Internet protocol (VoIP).
A day before the attack, the LeT commanders had called up this number twice -- at 5.31 pm and 5.40 pm -- and had conversations lasting 465 and 562 seconds, respectively. The man in question is accused of smuggling drugs from Pakistan to India and is believed to have been on parole at the time he received the calls. He is said to be currently lodged in a Patiala jail.
Source: The Indian Express