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'Akshardham temple attackers were from Pakistan'
Saturday, September 28, 2002
(12:00 AM)
By Manas Dasgupta
The Hindu

While ruling out that the two terrorists could be "locals" and that the attack was for taking "revenge" against the Gujarat killings — as the unsigned letters found on the terrorists' bodies indicated— Mr. Chakravarthi said the "support" of some local people could not be ruled out. It was not possible for any outsider to launch an attack on the Akshardham temple without having an intricate knowledge of the complex. It was likely that the terrorists had visited the complex earlier, and were possibly helped by some local people, before launching the attack.

GANDHINAGAR, India -- The Hindu
The Gujarat police may have achieved an important breakthrough in the investigations into the attack on the Akshardham temple by identifying the driver of the taxi in which two terrorists are believed to have travelled from the Ahmedabad railway station.

The Director-General of Police, K. Chakravarthi, said here today that the police were yet to confirm and corroborate the information given by the driver on the two terrorists. He denied that the driver, Rajubhai Thakore, and the owner of the taxi, Mansukh Acharya, had been arrested and said that several other taxi drivers too had been picked up for questioning.

The two terrorists came out of the railway station around 2.45 p.m., carrying a huge bag and hired the taxi. During the entire 50-km journey they did not speak to each other except at the Koba-Gandhinagar circle where they asked the driver in Hindi to stop for a while so that they could drink water. They bought a bottle of water from a hotel and then went to Akshardham.

The driver had identified the bodies of the two terrorists to be those of the same persons who travelled in his taxi. Apparently, the terrorists were carrying their arms and ammunition in their bag. The bag, as revealed later, contained a couple of bedrolls in which the arms were hidden.
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