KASAB

On 26 November 2008 ten heavily armed terrorists entered Mumbai. They headed for the city s iconic landmarks and the mayhem they unleashed lasted nearly 60 hours. The audacious terror attacks jolted Mumbai like never before. Even as they mourned; the residents of Maximum City demanded answers. But the information they got in return accounts of the investigation; government rhetoric; newspaper reports; television features; books and even a film was sketchy at best. Meanwhile; the courts continued with their prosecution of Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab; the lone surviving 26/11 gunman. The broad picture available to the public is of the Pakistan-based terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Taiba and its ringleaders such as Hafiz Muhammad Saeed and Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi training; arming and dispatching ten young men in a boat to attack India s commercial capital. All we have been told about Kasab is that he was just another recruit brainwashed into carrying out the plot against Mumbai. Kasab: The Face of 26/11 breaks new ground by painstakingly piecing together Kasab s terror trail. The narrative follows Kasab through the bylanes of Pakistani villages and cities as he made his way towards PoK; the dense forests where the terrorist-training camps are situated; the trains; buses and jeeps he boarded; the Indian vessel he and the others hijacked en route to Mumbai s shores; Kasab s capture and incarceration. Rommel Rodrigues path-breaking investigative journalism fleshes out for the first time the well thought-out planning and organization that lay behind the attacks of 26/11.