Confirmed: Surviving Mumbai jihadi grew up and trained in Pakistan

At other Faridkots, including one near the town of Khanewal, villagers had been friendly and helpful, proffering tea as they shook their heads. ‘No. Not from here,’ they said. For a while, it appeared that this Faridkot would also prove a wasted journey. The mayor said there had been no local police investigation, suggesting that the authorities did not view this place with suspicion. But, over time, inconsistencies in the villagers’ accounts heightened suspicion that this was the place. ‘He [Amir] has lived here for a few years,’ said one villager, Mohammad Taj. ‘He has three sons and three daughters.’…

Finally one villager confirmed what was going on: ‘You’re being given misinformation. We’ve all known from the first day [of the news of the terrorist attack] that it was him, Ajmal Amir Kasab. His mother started crying when she saw his picture on the television.’

Attempts to meet Amir, the father, however, were not to be successful. Villagers eventually told us that he and his wife, Noor, had been mysteriously spirited away earlier in the week…

But the villager who turned whistleblower said that local religious clerics were brainwashing youths in the area and that Lashkar-e-Taiba’s founder, Hafiz Sayeed, had visited nearby Depalpur, where there were ‘hundreds’ of supporters.