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American terror suspect David Headley was scheduled to visit India again in November last year, apparently to finalise the next target for terror outfit Lashker-e-Tayiba and set up a base in Delhi. Sources privy to the investigations said that Headley, 49, had told his friends in India that he was coming to the country in November.
Headley's messages to his friends, who have recorded their statements before the National Investigation Agency, stopped in the last week of September, barely a few days before he was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigations at O'Hare airport in Chicago on October 3 last year, the sources said. He was arrested just before he could board a plane for Philadelphia en route to Pakistan.
Since Lashker had postponed its planned terror strike on Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, because of international pressure following the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai, Headley was coming to India to finalise the next target, believe investigators.
The friends, which included some women, told the investigators that Headley was constantly in touch with them from the US and before being arrested, he had said that he was coming to India and that they will have a get-together.
According to the documents shared by the FBI, Headley had been asked by his handler, a Pakistani army official, that he should wind up his office in Mumbai and "open up a new business centre in Delhi to be used as a cover for future activities".
The travel details of Headley, who is now turning out to be the globe-trotting prize asset of the LeT, was being examined by various agencies, the sources said. The investigators believe that the last visit of Headley to India in March last year may have been to finalise the synchronised terror strikes on Jewish houses located in five cities.
Piecing together the travel trail of Headley during his visit to India in March last year, the investigators were of the opinion that the US terror suspect was scouting only Jewish targets, including the office of Israeli airlines El Al in Mumbai.
Headley had carried out a reconnaissance of the office of El AI located at Cuffe Parade in Mumbai in March this year, before moving to the national capital, where he chose to stay in a small hotel in Paharganj area.
The security agencies carried out the reconnaissance of the area and found a Chabad House barely 300 metres from the hotel. From Delhi, Headley traveled to Pushkar in the outskirts of Ajmer in Rajasthan, where he insisted on a room opposite a Jewish prayer centre, claiming he was a Jew and wanted 'holy sight'.
After staying there for three days, Headley moved to Goa where he stayed at a guest house located in Anjuna village along the coast of Arabian Sea before proceeding towards Pune, where he scouted the area around Koregaon Park.
Headley, who was born to a Pakistani father and whose earlier name was Daood Gilani, has been charged by the FBI for conspiring in the audacious Mumbai attack of last year which killed 166 people.
On the Indian side, the National Investigating Agency, which was formed in the aftermath of 26/11, is probing the role of Headley and his Pakistani-Canadian accomplice Tahawwur Rana.