At the bus terminal the next day, Krishna, accompanied by two men, met the five CTC operatives. He collected the Rs 1.5 lakh in Nepalese rupiah from Atharv.

Krishna then asked, ‘Are you guys Pakistanis?’

‘No, we are Indians. I am Atharv.’

‘Write what I say on a piece of paper. Let me see if you are who you claim to be. I don’t deal with bloody Pakistanis,’ Krishna said.

He is an LeT mule but has no clue about it, Atharv chuckled to himself.

Krishna asked Atharv to write his name in Hindi. Krishna passed Atharv in the little nationality test on seeing the paper.

The recruits were then driven away on motorcycles by Krishna and his companions. After a ride of almost six hours, much of which involved travelling on narrow dirt paths off the main roads, they arrived at the small town of Piparpati Parchrouwa close to the India–Nepal border. Ten kilometres from the town was a forested area within which lay an unmanned, unmarked stretch of the border. With Krishna’s help, Atharv and the four other CTC operatives were able to cross the border undetected. They then took a bus to Varanasi, from where they took another bus to Patna in Bihar.

The next day, as directed by Al-Wali, Atharv, Anant and Nirav took a train to Mumbai while Rohit and Sahil took a train to Delhi.

Atharv and his four associates were back in India over a year after they had left for Pakistan from Kathmandu. ‘Posing’ as Hindus, they were back to act as part of the LeT’s sleeper cells in India. Atharv tried to suppress his laughter.

It was now 5 September 2004.

40. THE FIRST ASSIGNMENT

40

THE FIRST ASSIGNMENT

‘Tabiyat kaisi hai? Pahunch gaye khairiyat se?’ asked a man with a raspy voice.

‘Everything is fine, sir,’ said Atharv to his handler from the LeT.

Atharv was standing inside Vasant Communications, a cramped PCO booth. It was right next to the Shri Krishna Kirana provision store located behind a Jain temple on Reay Road. This was a suburban area that had been developed commercially in the early twentieth century due to its proximity to the port and jetties at Ballard Estate and Ballard Pier in south Mumbai.

Prakash Pawar, forty-six, who ran the provision store and the telephone booth, was a busy man and loved sharing his opinions on everything under the sun. From 9 a.m. to 11 p.m., his shop was crowded with customers from the nearby Shri Ganesha Rahiwasi Sangh, a sprawling slum that housed families belonging to the lower and lower-middle income groups. It also had a few cooperative housing societies, such as the six-storey ‘Anwarat’, where Atharv was staying with Anant and Nirav in a two-bedroom flat on the third floor.