Lashkar threat to Thackeray a false alarm, says Headley

The LeT operative said killing the Shiv Sena supremo would be like killing the proverbial golden goose

The Pakistani Lashkar-e-Taibau00a0 (LeT) wanted to invite Bal Thackeray for a fund raiser in the US, hoping he would make inflammatory comments that would benefit the ISI, but they never planned to kill the Shiv Sena supremo, David Headley has said.


Headley told the court that the Shiv Sena is 'very influential' in India

Describing Shiv Sena as very influential in India, Headley said killing Thackeray would have been a stupid thing to do operationally and would be tantamount to killing the goose that lays the golden egg.

However, during his discussions with other Lashkar operatives, the 26/11 terror accused did joke about killing the Shiv Sena supremo. "Does LeT joke about killing people?" Headley was asked by the defence attorney during the Chicago trial of Tahawwur Hussain Rana.

"Yes. They do," Headley said in response to the question, which was being asked in context of the Lashkar leader asking him to get in touch with Raga Rege, his friend in Shiv Sena, to get its leader Bal Thackeray to come to the United States where he could be killed.

Killing, a joke?
"They do it (kill people) and joke about it as well," Headley said noting that the discussion about killing Bal Thackeray was a joke.

Headley responded 'yes' when the defence attorney said that the ISI might have benefited from a Shiv Sena fund raiser in the US where Bal Thackeray would have said something inflammatory. The video of that could have been used by the ISI for saying that the US is hosting a terrorist.

"So if you are really bringing all this time and effort to bring the guy over, you wouldn't kill him?" the defence attorney asked.

"No, even though I would have wanted to, because that would operationally be a stupid thing to do. To invest all this money to fly somebody here and then kill him, I would kill the golden goose, as they say, that lays the golden egg," Headley said.

"You thought you were going to get information out of him?" Headley was asked. "And get deeper inside of that organisation. They were very influential in India," he replied.