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According to Khan's interrogation report, Shah was neck-deep in a charas smuggling racket and was caught by the kidnappers when he failed to meet a deadline. Unadkat, whose involvement in the cricket betting racket after moving to Dubai sucked him into the world of crime, has confessed to being directly involved in the Parekh and Shah kidnappings. In the latest development, the Enforcement Directorate raided the Mumbai offices of Rajesh Shroff on the charge that he was linked to the transfer of hawala and ransom money to Dubai after the kidnappings masterminded by Ansari and Unadkat. Shroff has admitted to doing business with Unadkat.

RAGING ANGER: The Pakistani flag and Musharraf's effigy being burnt after the USIS attack

During the investigations in the Parekh kidnapping case it was discovered that Ansari and Mallick were the same person: when the Rajkot Police traced the bank account of the prime accused Mallick to the ICICI Bank in Mumbai, his photograph was found to match that of Ansari, already in CBI files.

A series of arrests then helped investigators fit in the pieces of a sinister jigsaw. Khan's interrogation in Rajkot by police teams from six states first confirmed that Ansari had arranged $100,000 (Rs 48 lakh) for Sheikh, which later found its way to Mohammed Atta, head of the World Trade Center attackers. Khan said he had always been in awe of Sheikh's commitment to jehad despite his background, education and affluence. He also knew of Sheikh as a tough nut, a man who had withstood more than six hours of ''treatment'' at the hands of Indian interrogators. But Khan remained reluctant to part with the money until Ansari convinced him that Sheikh's British connections would be of use to their criminal network. Ansari considered the opportunity to pass on the money to Sheikh as an "investment". An e-mail from Ansari to Khan on August 6 asks, "Kya tujhe koi aitraaz hoga agar mein pacchas peti kharcha kar doon jaisa ke unhone bataya hai? (Do you have any objection if we spend the Rs 50 lakh they have asked for?)" Khan gave his consent.

Khan's interrogation report states that Sheikh had asked him and Ansari to "recruit Muslim youth who could be trained in Pakistan and would be sent back to India to participate in jehad. These youth/mujahideen could be used for underworld operations as well''.

One such volunteer from across the border was let man Shahnawaz Bhatti who was caught by the Kutch police in May 2001. During interrogation Bhatti revealed that more than 56 kg of RDX, guns, rocket-launchers and explosive devices were hidden at various locations along the Kutch-Patan-Banaskantha sections of the Indo-Pak border. His confession helped the Gujarat Police recover the cache. The terrorist also confessed that Cheema had given him Khan's photograph for identification and asked him to contact and sign on for any ''mission'' he may have planned.

Khan's death on December 7 in Rajkot proved to be Ansari's undoing. To avenge his aide's killing, Ansari planned the attack on the USIS in Kolkata and even claimed responsibility for it in a telephone call to the cid, Kolkata. Ansari was arrested by the Dubai Police when he was about to board a flight to Karachi on January 23, a day after the attack. There is a possibility that Ansari's ambitions to be ''bigger than Dawood'' may have contributed to his not being ''rescued'' by the underworld. The CBI used e-mail interception technology to track Ansari by tracing his e-mails in January, first to servers in Dubai and then to Islamabad. They used the help of the local Internet service provider to determine the exact location from which Ansari had sent an e-mail; it transpired that he had been operating out of No. 23, Main Double Road, Islamabad, for a week.

Sheikh's downfall took a more elementary route: the Pearl kidnapping was foolhardy as it came at a time when the world attention and American pressure was focused on Pakistan and its treatment of suspected terrorists. By kidnapping an American citizen Sheikh spelt his own doom. The police in Karachi, helped by a cybertracking technical team from the FBI, traced the three men who had sent the e-mails about Pearl's abduction to the media. The arrested men implicated Sheikh in the kidnapping. The authorities then picked up Sheikh's in-laws from Lahore, exerting pressure on him to surrender. They claimed that the family helped them trace Sheikh to a rented house in Lahore's fashionable Defence Society. In court, Sheikh said he had given himself up to save his wife and three-year-old child from harassment. Ansari's family continues to live in Varanasi's old silk-weaving neighbourhood of Lallapura, his widowed mother maintaining her son had not contacted her in years.

The arrests of Ansari and Sheikh confirm yet again the Pakistani hand in the blossoming of the ''terror twins''. Not only did Ansari own a house in Rawalpindi-arranged for him by Sheikh-but was also given a second Pakistani passport (J 872142) as late as February 2001 in the name of Safeer Mohammad Rana at Lahore. He also travelled freely between Dubai and Pakistan. When CBI Joint Director Neeraj Kumar landed in Dubai on February 5, carrying Ansari's case file, he needed to show only one piece of evidence to convince the Dubai authorities that Ansari had to be deported. Kumar pulled out the application papers of Ansari's original passport (B-1035758) issued in Patna, in Mallick's name. As this passport was acquired by Ansari before he obtained a Pakistani passport-no matter that both carried false identities-Dubai was convinced that Ansari was an Indian national. His crime record told its own tale (see graphic) and so at 1 p.m. on February 9, at the Dubai International Airport, a smile broke out on Kumar's face even as the one on Ansari's disappeared. Says Kumar: ''Ansari's handing over is a defining moment in global cooperation among law enforcement agencies.''

While Ansari's interrogation by the CBI and other states' police will throw more light on the empire of crime he had built in India, and the web of terror he spun with Sheikh, more remains to be done. For a start, India would do well to put pressure on both America and Pakistan to hand over Sheikh, who already faces an Interpol red alert as his name features in the list of India's most wanted criminals. If that were to happen in the near future, it just might undo a mistake committed by India on a chilly New Year's eve in 1999 when they let Sheikh go on a flight to freedom.

-with Sheela Raval in Mumbai, Uday Mahurkar in Ahmedabad and Hasan Zaidi
in Karachi