Kasab: The Face of 26/11

On 26 November 2008 ten heavily armed terrorists entered Mumbai. They headed for the city’s iconic landmarks and the mayhem they unleashed lasted nearly 60 hours. The audacious terror attacks jolted Mumbai like never before. Even as they mourned the residents of Maximum City demanded answers. But the information they got in return-accounts of the investigation government rhetoric newspaper reports television features books and even a film-was sketchy at best. Meanwhile the courts continued with their prosecution of Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab the lone surviving 26/11 gunman. The broad picture available to the public is of the Pakistan-based terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Taiba and its ringleaders such as Hafiz Muhammad Saeed and Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi training arming and dispatching ten young men in a boat to attack India’s commercial capital. All we have been told about Kasab is that he was just another recruit brainwashed into carrying out the plot against Mumbai. Kasab The Face of 26/11 breaks new ground by painstakingly piecing together Kasab’s terror trail. The narrative follows Kasab through the bylanes of Pakistani villages and cities as he made his way towards PoK the dense forests where the terrorist-training camps are situated the trains buses and jeeps he boarded the Indian vessel he and the others hijacked en route to Mumbai’s shores Kasab’s capture and incarceration. Rommel Rodrigues’ path-breaking investigative journalism fleshes out for the first time the well thought-out planning and organization that lay behind the attacks of 26/11. About the Author Rommel Rodrigues is an Indian author film director screenwriter and producer based out of Mumbai. He has worked in several Indian newspapers writing on crime business politics and current affairs for over two decades. He has authored several books.