Among the principal characters that the horrific 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks threw up—the puppet master Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, the brutal foot soldier Ajmal Kasab, and the reconnaissance expert David Headley aka Daood Gilani—it was the latter who was the most intriguing. An agent of terror who set the scene while living under assumed identities, mingling with locals, and cutting deals with multiple interest groups.
During his trial in the United States, in which he got 35 years in prison in 2013 through a plea bargain that ensured he escaped the death penalty, extradition to India and even life imprisonment in exchange for information on terror networks, the presiding judge, Harry Leinenweber, summed Headley up perfectly when he said, “He commits crimes, cooperates, and then gets rewarded for the cooperation.”
Headley’s…
