Mumbai/New Delhi, Nov 16 (IANS) Sleuths of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) have fanned out across India in a sweeping investigation pointing to the involvement of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) operatives David Coleman Headley and Tahawwur Hussain Rana in the 26/11 terror strikes.
Highly placed sources said the visits of the duo to at least five cities was an effort to build a local network and also for a reconnaissance mission of terror targets. Both are currently in custody in the US.

The NIA has also asked filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt’s son, Rahul, not to leave Mumbai.

“Rahul has also been asked to stay in Mumbai and inform the NIA about his travel plans, in case he has to leave Mumbai in any emergency,” a home ministry official told IANS on condition of anonymity.

According to immigration records, terror suspect Rana was in India for about three weeks in November 2008 and left the country days before the Mumbai terror strikes. Investigators here are examining if this visit was linked to the Mumbai attacks.

The records of three five-star hotels in Mumbai, where Headley is supposed to have stayed, have been obtained by the NIA. Officers have also requested the authorities of the Trident and the Taj, as well as those of a five-star hotel in the suburbs, to provide them with CCTV footage.

A similar exercise is afoot in Delhi where police are trying to extract as much information on Headley’s stay in two budget hotels in March this year.

Investigators believe that one man who can help them gather more details on the LeT operative’s visits to Mumbai is Rahul Bhatt, a fitness instructor, who met Headley in a gym.

Home secretary G.K. Pillai is already on record saying that Rahul had not been given a clean chit by investigators, an indication that he would be questioned as and when new facts emerge in the probe.

Rahul, who has admitted to having known Headley, has said he helped the American rent a three-bedroom flat near Breach Candy Hospital in the city. Besides Rahul, investigators are also likely to question another trainer at the gym located opposite the US consulate.

Across Mumbai, Kochi, Delhi and Ahmedabad investigators are trying to map out the network of the two LeT operatives and the people they got in touch with.

“This probe is going to take some time. We need to get more evidence and information to piece together the full conspiracy,” said a senior intelligence official.

Security agencies in India went into a tizzy after it was known from the US’ Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that Headley, who visited India nine times over a three-year period since 2006, was planning major terror strikes in the country.

Headley is said to have operated a visa agency in Mumbai for almost two years until July 2008 and had travelled to Jaipur, Delhi and Bangalore, all three cities that were hit by bomb blasts last year.

The NIA team reached Mumbai Saturday to probe the activities of Headley and his alleged accomplice Rana, a Canadian of Pakistani origin, after they were arrested Oct 3 by the FBI for allegedly planning terror strikes in India and Denmark.

On Nov 11, the NIA registered a case against the two under various sections of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act for conspiring to wage war against India.

Both are currently in FBI detention and the agency has time till January 2010 to file charges against them for allegedly plotting a terror attack in Denmark and conspiring a for a similar attack in India.