CBI books two key hijack plotters

Abdul Latif Adam Momin, the CBI alleges, was the Indian lynchpin for the Pakistani hostage-takers and had arranged for their accommodation, transport, passports and driving licences.

Yusuf Nepali, whose real name is believed to be Gopal Bhimbahadur Maan, allegedly acted as their conduit in Kathmandu and had obtained and delivered the revolvers, hand grenades and bullets used by the hijackers to terrorize the passengers of IC-814.

Both men had been nabbed by the Mumbai police even before the hostage drama ended and were booked for possessing arms and forging documents. Mumbai police officials say that since the FIR had been registered in Amritsar and the CBI had a special magistrate in Patiala, a warrant for the duo was procured from there and presented in a Mumbai court.

Latif and Nepali are being put to sustained questioning and are said to have confessed to their role in providing 8220;logistical help,8221; which includes arranging fake Indian identities and supplying arms to the hijackers.

The CBI is in the process of getting corroborative evidence from Kathmandu on the 22-odd telephone calls that Abdul Latif is said to have made from his Mumbai hideout to the various places where the hijackers were staying in Kathmandu.

These calls were made from November 20 onward and five calls were made during the period of the hijack. Incidentally, the interception of Abdul Latif8217;s telephone call to Abdul Rouf 8212; Maulana Masood Azhar8217;s brother who lived in Karachi 8212; had provided the early leads that linked the suspects in Mumbai to the hijacking.

It now transpires, sources said, that Abdul Latif is a Gujarati who took to Islamic studies in Mumbai and later migrated to the Gulf and became an Imam in a Madrasa. There he came across the brother of Farooq Kashmiri, a frontline Harkat leader and by 1994 was in Pakistan being groomed in arms-training camps. Abdul Latif has admitted that soon thereafter, he moved to Mumbai and had arranged hideout, arms and identity covers for a host of militant groups.

It was some time in October last year that Abdul Rouf asked him for his help in a crucial operation: the release of Maulana Masood Azhar from the Kot Balwal prison in Jammu.

The Kathmandu connection in the conspiracy is evident now for the role of Yusuf Nepali was also central to the plot. Nepali, sources said, was in the know of the plot since October, had travelled to the Nepal border to obtain the arms and had delivered them to the hijackers in Kathmandu. But Yusuf Nepali is known to have told his interrogators that he had received instructions for the purchase of three revolvers, three hand-grenades and about 60 rounds of ammunition from Karachi for an 8220;important operation.8221;