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Militants posed as tourists to
take snaps of Parliament

Sumir Kaul in New Delhi

Investigations into the December 13 terrorist attack have revealed that the conspirators had posed as tourists to take pictures of Parliament with a digital camera.

Though earlier it was believed that the militants had used television pictures to generate a visual topography of Parliament, investigators have now found that they used as many as 22 exposures from a sophisticated digital camera to plan their way around the complex.

The shots were taken between 1030 and 1130 hours when VVIPs, including Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Home Minister Lal Kishenchand Advani, visit Parliament for the question hour.

"Mohammed Afzal, Shaukat Hussain and Mohammed posed as tourists near Vijay Chowk and clicked the pictures," an investigating officer said.

These pictures were later fed into a laptop for a detailed study of presence of armed guards at various times in and around Parliament.

About the mobile phones recovered from the killed militants, the sources said several phone calls were made by the suicide squad to Karachi, Dubai and Germany.

The sources said that the militants were under clear instructions not to call Pakistan directly and that is why they routed their telephone calls either from Dubai or Germany.

PTI

Complete Coverage: The Attack on Parliament

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