Pakistan's complicity in the 7/11 terror strikes, a matter of huge public debate, is bared in the confessional statements of the 11 men who are suspected of having carried out the attacks. All the statements have since been retracted, but under MCOCA, a special anti-terror law, they are admissible as evidence in court. The confessions tell a story of a conspiracy planned and executed at the behest of Pakistan's intelligence agency ISI. They have been submitted this week in a special court ahead of the trial.
TOI has in its possession all the confessional statements. As in any such complex operation, the planning to carry out serial blasts on Mumbai's local trains took place at various levels, with the imprint of the ISI writ large at every stage.
There were many players, including officers of Pakistan's intelligence establishment who provided technical support, camps run by terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) in Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir, and jobless youth from India who actually carried out the attacks.
What comes through from the confessions is that Pakistani nationals took active part in the execution of the attacks and left Mumbai only after bombs on seven local trains had exploded.
(In the weeks that followed the blasts, TOI carried detailed reports on how the plot was hatched and profiled the men who executed it. But this is the first time that the confessions of the accused have been accessed.)