Mumbai investigators focus on homegrown suspects

NEW DELHI, India — Having blamed a Pakistani terrorist group for last month's deadly attacks in Mumbai, investigators are turning their attention to homegrown suspects who may have assisted with attacks on Indian soil.

The suspects are thought to have offered help with surveillance, safe houses and border crossings. The potential involvement of Indians complicates India's initial assertion that the Mumbai attacks were carried out solely by Pakistani nationals.

Mumbai police are looking in particular at two Indian suspects in their custody who, they say, were trained by the Pakistani group Lashkar-e-Taiba, or "Army of the Pure," and who may have helped extremists as they prepared to launch strikes.

Indian police say at least one Indian operative — Sabauddin Ahmed, 29 — aided Pakistani extremists by providing safe houses and guiding them across the border to carry out assaults.

Although Pakistani extremists once favored Kashmir as their route into India, crossing the border there has become more difficult in recent years as authorities have cracked down on infiltrators. Indian investigators say they are uncovering information on a network of paths into India through Nepal and Bangladesh, as well as the Arabian Sea, the route of the 10 gunmen who carried out the Mumbai attacks.

The use of new land and sea routes, investigators say, has widened the conflict beyond Kashmir and into the Indian heartland and cities such as Hyderabad and Bangalore, both recently the scene of bombings.

The focus on possible Indian collaborators comes nearly two weeks after the assault on India's financial capital, in which gunmen opened fire at several sites and laid siege to two luxury hotels and a Jewish center, killing at least 171 people, including six Americans, and wounding more than 230.

Ahmed is being brought to Mumbai for questioning over his alleged links to Lashkar, the group that is said to have masterminded the attacks. Indian police arrested Ahmed, along with another suspect, Faheem Ansari, 35, earlier this year in connection with a grenade attack on a police camp.

After the Mumbai siege, India demanded Pakistan crack down on the militant groups it suspected of planning the attacks. Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani confirmed Wednesday the arrest of militant leaders Zarrar Shah, suspected of having acted as a liaison between Lashkar-e-Taiba and the gunmen, and Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, also a suspected mastermind of the Mumbai attacks.

Today, India's top law-enforcement official, Palaniappan Chidambaram, announced to Parliament a massive overhaul of security and intelligence agencies. He said the government will beef up coastal security, create a national investigative agency, better train police and strengthen anti-terror laws.