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Fracas over FBI team equipment

MUMBAI: Sources in the joint Mumbai Police-Intelligence Bureau investigation team, probing last week’s terror attack, said efforts to harvest further evidence through exploring the Lashkar’s possible local infrastructure have so far yielded little.

Police sources also said there was no substance in reports that the terrorists had communicated with their command headquarters in Pakistan using mobile phones.

Reports that Lashkar operatives had checked into one or more hotels prior to the attacks, and rented accommodation in Mumbai’s Coloba area remain unsubstantiated.

A Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) team, which flew in from the U.S., was briefly detained at the Chattrapati Shivaji International Airport here, after Customs officials refused to allow forensics equipment on board their aircraft on Indian soil.

India had granted permission to the FBI to examine the sites involved in the fidayeen attack, since U.S. nationals were also targeted.

However, government sources said, the team arrived here without providing prior lists of personnel and the specialised forensic equipment they were carrying.

“Since Customs officials in Mumbai had no idea what the FBI team was carrying,” a New Delhi-based Ministry of Home Affairs official in New Delhi said, “they naturally asked for an explanation”.

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