Mumbai: The National Investigation Agency
has formed several teams here as well as in other states and
started questioning several people to trace the footsteps of
David Headley, an American citizen arrested by FBI on terror
charges, and his accomplice Tahawwar Hussain Rana, in India as
new leads suggested that they had visited Kerala.
NIA officials were looking for an estate agent in Khar, a
western suburb of the city, and Tardeo of Central Mumbai, who
could have helped Headley in finding a house in Breach Candy
in South Mumbai, official sources said.
The officials, who arrived here yesterday, will examine
and procure as well as retrieve CCTV footages, in case they
were deleted, from various hotels of the metropolis where the
duo had visited. Both Headley and Rana were arrested by FBI
last month on charges of plotting terror strikes inside and
outside US.
The NIA sleuths are also understood to have questioned
Rahul Bhatt and three other people including the gym
proprietor where Headley is believed to have met Rahul, the
sources said, adding that some of the computers and laptops,
purportedly used by Headley, have been seized and sent for
examination.
In a related development, sleuths of central security
agencies have found that Rana, a Canadian citizen of Pakistan
origin, went to Kochi in Kerala.
Union Home Secretary G K Pillai, while making it clear that
no one has been given clean chit in the Headley case so far,
said in New Delhi that Rana had visited Kochi last year 10
days before the terror attacks in Mumbai.
Bureau Report
First Published: Sunday, November 15, 2009, 23:57