NEW DELHI: The terrorists who wreaked mayhem in Mumbai for three days were made to believe they were not being sent on a suicide mission and that they would be coming back alive.

In a disclosure made by Ajmal, the jihadi nabbed alive, the group belonging to a Kashmir-based Pakistani militant group had planned to sail out on Thursday.

Their recruiters had even charted out the return route for them and stored it on the GPS device which they had used to navigate their way to the Mumbai shoreline.

This suggests that the terrorists were willing to undertake a mission which they knew would be very risky, but not necessarily suicidal.

Sources said that the bait of safe return must have been used by the recruiters to convince the wavering among the group to join the audacious plot against Mumbai.
Ajmal made another important disclosure: all terrorists were trained in marine warfare.

Officials are surprised by the details of the training the terrorists were put through. This was very different from a terrorist attack, and amounted to an offensive from the sea, said a source.

Ajmal has revealed the names of some of his fellow jihadis -- all Pakistanis -- as Abu Ali, Fahad, Omar, Shoaib, Umer, Abu Akasha, Ismail, Abdul Rahman (Bara) and Abdul Rahman (Chhota).

The account of Ajmal also strengthens the doubt of the complicity of powerful elements in the Pakistani establishment. According to him, the group set off on Nov 21 from an isolated creek near Karachi without arms and ammunition.

The group received arms and ammunition on a large vessel which picked them up the following day.

The vessel, whose ownership is now the subject of an international probe, had four Pakistanis apart from the crew. A day later, they came across an Indian-owned trawler, Kuber. Four fishermen on the trawler were killed, but its skipper, Amarjit Singh, was forced to proceed towards India.

Amarjit was killed the next day, and Ismail took over the wheel of the trawler.

A trained sailor, Ismail used the GPS to reach Mumbai coast last Wednesday. The group shifted to inflatable boats before disembarking at Badhwar Park in Cuffe Parade.

Ismail and Ajmal then took a taxi to Victoria Terminus. Three other batches of two each headed for Oberoi hotel, Cafe Leopold and Nariman House. The remaining four went to Taj Mahal hotel. -- Agencies