Pakistani-American terrorist-turned-approver David Coleman Headley on Saturday said he recced the Indian Army Headquarters in New Delhi in March 2009, after the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack.
The stunning reply came in response to a specific question posed during his cross-examination by lawyer Abdul Wahab Khan, about whether or not he (Headley) had recced the Vice-President of India’s house in New Delhi. Headley went on to reveal that he had recced and videographed the entire road between the Sena Bhawan – the Indian Army HQ – and the National Defence College (NDC), with the Vice-President’s House falling somewhere midway.
Confessions Made by Headley So Far
On February 12, during his examination-in-chief by Special Public Prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam, Headley had admitted that he visited the NDC campus once in 2007 at the insistence of his Lashkar-e-Taiba handler, Sajid Mir, as the terror group Al-Qaeda felt it was “a good, high-value target”.
On February 13, Headley revealed how, post-26/11, he had surveyed the NDC, Chabad Houses in Goa, Pushkar and Pune, besides the Indian Army’s Southern Command HQ in Pune (March 16-17, 2009) in an attempt by the Pakistan spy agency ISI to infiltrate the military establishment, recruit army officers and get ‘classified information’ from them.
He also said he believed that the US, Israel and India were enemies of Islam, but denied that he wanted to restore ‘Islamic rule’ in India.
Headley further said that though he was aware of the Thane college girl Ishrat Jahan episode through the newspapers, Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi had informed him about the ‘operation.’
He said he had informed India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA) about “a female member who had died in an encounter in India – Ishrat Jahan” but was clueless why the NIA did not record his statement accurately. Headley had first brought up Ishrat’s name, a 19-year-old girl studying in a Mumbai college, in February during his examination-in-chief by Special Public Prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam. But on Friday, he said the NIA had not prompted him in any manner to say her name.
The four-day cross-examination of Headley via video-conferencd from an undisclosed location in the US by Khan ended on Saturday afternoon.
(With inputs from IANS)
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