Surviving Mumbai attacker rose from crook to militant

Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, 21, was one of the 10 men who came ashore on a small rubber raft Nov. 26, divided into five pairs and attacked some of Mumbai’s best known and most beloved landmarks.

Kasab and his partner rampaged through the city’s main train terminal, then shot up a police station and a hospital, carjacked a police van — killing the city’s counterterrorism chief and four other police inside — and stole a second car.

They finally were brought to a halt in a shootout that killed Kasab’s partner and left Kasab with bullet wounds in both hands and a minor wound in his neck, said Rakesh Maria, the chief police investigator on the case.

Photographs of Kasab walking calmly through the train station with his assault rifle made him a symbol of the attacks.

In the days since Kasab’s capture, police have repeatedly interrogated him about his background, his training and the details of the attack. Maria declined to divulge the interrogation methods, saying only that Kasab was “fairly forthcoming.”

Kasab said he was one of five children of Mohammed Amir Kasab, a poor street food vendor in the Pakistani town of Farid Kot, Maria said.

But residents of the impoverished town of 7,000 people, 90 miles (140 kilometers) south of the Pakistani city of Lahore, said they had never heard of Kasab or his father.

Mayor Ghulam Mustafa said police and investigators from Pakistan’s spy agencies had also investigated the gunman’s link to the town and found nothing.

Maria said as a teenager, Kasab become a low-level thief, robbing people at knifepoint.

But he dreamed of starting his own gang, and began poking around Lahore, trying to buy guns. He was put in touch with a man who offered to send him for weapons training, and he readily agreed, Maria said.

Kasab soon found himself in a camp run by Lashkar-e-Taiba, Maria said. Lashkar, a banned Pakistani militant group, has alleged ties to Pakistan’s powerful intelligence agencies.

Though he had always been a religious Muslim, Kasab had never ascribed to the violent ideology of some extremist groups, Maria said.

That quickly changed in the camp.

“The moment he came under their wings, the indoctrination started. And that’s when he decided there should be some meaning to his life and jihad (holy war) was his calling,” he said.

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