Jundal went to Mecca to repent after 26/11 attack

The handler of the 26/11 terror attack on the city, Abu Jundal alias Zabiuddin Ansari, told interrogators of the Anti-Terrorism Squad that he regrets the killing of innocent persons and he visited the holy site in Mecca soon after the operation.

Sources in the ATS office said that Jundal, who was guiding the terrorists from a control room in Karachi in 2008, told investigators that soon after the terror strike, he visited Mecca because he regretted playing a key role in the deaths of innocent citizens.

Looking back: Abu Jundal being escorted to Tis Hazari court in New Delhi on Thursday. File pic

After he was kept in custody for almost 53 days, Jundal was handed over to Delhi police a few weeks ago and is currently lodged in Tihar Jail.

Jundal is the main accused in the 26/11 attacks and the Aurangabad arms haul case.

"After the 26/11 attack, Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, panicked as he never thought that the attack could be on such a large scale and bring about such massive effects. Jundal went to Mecca after the attacks as he felt guilty about the bloodshed," said a police officer from the ATS.

When he was in Mecca, Jundal was allegedly intercepted by Interpol and later handed over to the Indian police by the Saudi Arabian police. The police have also learnt that Jundal had married a girl in Pakistan and has a five-year-old child withher.

"Jundal was intercepted in Mecca, after which he was kept in a special cell in Saudi Arabia and then handed over. Since then, he has been keeping a copy of the holy Quran in his pocket. He is a five-time namaazi and gets up early in the morning and offers namaaz.

He knows he might be hanged like Ajmal Qasab and he sometimes asks for Allah's forgiveness for the carnage," said the police officer. u00a0The police said that after the attack, Jundal allegedly left his wife and child and secretly went to Saudi Arabia where he was apprehended. u00a0Now he says he wants to talk to his wife, and see his daughter. u00a0

LeT unhappy with ATS chief's death
Jundal told CB officers that Abu-al-Kama, one of the top LeT commanders present in the control room, was not too happy to hear about the death of then Anti-Terrorism Squad chief Hemant Karkare in the shootout behind Cama Hospital. Karkare had arrested Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur in the Malegaon blasts earlier that year and exposed the first tit-for-tat Hindu terror attack in India.