Investigations into suspected Lashkar-e-Toiba hitman Javed Shaikh’s trail before the Gujarat encounter on June 15 have revealed that he spent a few hours with a burqa-clad woman at a Malegaon hotel in Nashik district on June 11. Assistant commissioners Sanjay Jadhav and Dilip Shinde said Pune police had sent a team to Ahmednagar and Nashik as part of the investigation and found that Javed, his wife and children had reached Ahmednagar in a blue Indica on June 9.He told his relatives that he had bought the car and carried out repairs on it. On June 11, after informing his family that he was leaving for Mumbai, Javed checked in at a Malegaon hotel at 3:30 pm with a burqa-clad woman. He left around 7:30 pm, hotel staff told police. Suspecting that the woman may be linked with the Ahmedabad operation, police are trying to ascertain her identity. Meanwhile, police said they recovered Javed’s school certificate and electrician’s certificate from his flat in Kalas Society, which were found to be forged. The two documents were used when Javed went to Dubai in 1998, police said.
