By Express News Service

NEW DELHI: Former Mumbai police commissioner Rakesh Maria has revealed in his memoir Let Me Say It Now that Pakistan’s ISI and Lashkar-e-Taiba had planned to project the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack as a case of ‘Hindu terror’. Maria, who helmed the probe into the 26/11 terror attack, says in his book that the plan for Ajmal Kasab — the only Pakistani terrorist who was caught alive — was to die as ‘Samir Chaudhari’, a Bengaluru resident.

The book, which was released on Monday, says the ISI and LeT were striving to eliminate Kasab in jail as he was the key evidence linking them with the attack. Dawood Ibrahim’s gang was tasked with eliminating him.“If everything went according to plan, Kasab would have died as Chaudhari and the media would have blamed ‘Hindu terrorists’ for the attack…

The terror organisation had also reportedly planted fake ID cards with Indian addresses on the terrorists, with the name Samir Chaudhari on a photograph of Kasab released after the terror attack…The Mumbai Police tried hard to not disclose any details to the media fearing for his security,” Maria, who also investigated the 1993 serial blasts in Mumbai, states in his book.“In the captured photograph, Kasab was seen wearing a red thread on his right wrist, which is believed to be a sacred Hindu thread….There would have been screaming headlines in newspapers claiming how Hindu terrorists had attacked Mumbai…But…here he was, Ajmal Amir Kasab of Faridkot in Pakistan.”

BJP charges Congress with taking ISI’s line, propagating ‘hindu terror’ theory

The BJP latched on to Rakesh Maria’s revelations to allege that the Congress had hatched a conspiracy to propagate the ‘Hindu terror’ theory. “The ISI, as stated in the book by Maria, had tried to push the ‘Hindu terror’ plank in India by giving the identity of Samir Choudhary to Kasab. The Congress had also been trying hard to project the ‘Hindu terror’ angle at the same time,” said BJP MP GVL Narsimha Rao. Party general secretary Ram Madhav said while ISI’s sinister design was foiled, the Congress continued to push the ‘Hindu terror’ theory around the time of 26/11. “Some intellectuals had sought to link the 26/11 attack to the RSS, while getting support of Congress leaders,” he said.