“The Da Lakhvi Code” continues……

Further, this email ID was being used from IP addresses traced to different cyber cafés in Delhi. For instance, it was used from a cyber café in Paharganj on 1 February 2003, Daryaganj on 3 February, Moti Bagh on 7 February and so on. This discovery alarmed us, as it suggested that either an acquaintance or an associate of the terrorist killed by the BSF in Kashmir was in Delhi. But, why would such a person change his location so frequently to send emails, unless, we reasoned, he had some evil design. This called for immediate action, given the security scenario in the country at the time.

Since I was his immediate superior, Pramod brought his discoveries to my attention. I asked him to map the locations of the cyber cafés from where such emails were being sent.

A certain pattern emerged on conducting this exercise. The cyber cafés were located mostly in and around central Delhi. We deployed several police teams in the vicinity of the cafés that had been mapped out. Additionally, our men went to each of these cafés posing as regular customers and planted software in their computers using floppy discs (still used in those days) to feed in ‘hot words’ such as football, chachaji, neha, stupa, love you, etc. (the reason these words were chosen will become clear later in the chapter) so that in the event that an email containing such words was detected, a message would immediately be sent to Pramod’s phone from the computer used for receiving or sending such an email. Pramod, in turn, would direct the team located nearest to the café to check who was using the café’s computers and pick up the person concerned.

Though the cyber cafés were far too many and the police teams comparatively fewer, on a couple
occasions, our men came close to nabbing suspects, missing them only by a couple of minutes.

To be Continued ……….