Aslam Sheikh wondered why the lights were still on in Room D-7. It was three in the morning and when Sheikh, an autorickshaw driver, returned home to Salim chawl in the north-western suburb of Marol in Mumbai, it was pitch dark-except for the yellow light shining in the room where Syed Mohammed Hanif lived. A dog-tired Sheikh vaguely hoped there was no emergency.

At the time there wasn't. But in less than 12 hours there would be. In the afternoon, bombs would tear through the Gateway of India and Zaveri Bazaar, kill 52, injure 149 and deal the swaggering confidence of the city a hammer blow. As the autorickshaw driver got ready to turn in at the end of another long working day, the people in D-7 were preparing to turn the world, as understood in the tired interiors of Salim chawl, upside down.

BLACK MONDAY: The gory scene at the Gateway of India after the blasts

Inside that 10x12 ft room, an oddly domestic scene played out in the dead of night. Sitting on a newly built loft and working into the early hours of August 25, Hanif and his friend Nasir, calm and clear-eyed, were busy. Hanif's wife Fahmida and daughters Farheen, 16, and Shakira, 4, were sleeping below. But far from domestic work, Hanif and Nasir were engaged in an activity their neighbours would have found very bizarre. The two men were assembling explosives and timers to make lethal packages that, when the sun came up, would blow apart not just dozens of families but theories about what it took to make a terrorist.

Later in the day Hanif is said to have put the package into one of Mumbai's trademark black and yellow Fiat taxis, bundled his wife and daughters into it and had it driven to the Gateway of India. There they abandoned the taxi and every living thing around it to its fate, turned their backs on the sound of the blast, the impact of the death they had caused and returned to their humdrum lives the next day. Hanif drove his auto, Fahmida and Farheen minded home and the innocent Shakira went to school talking about her unexpected two-day holiday.

UNUSUAL SUSPECTS

A chilling portrait of the family behind the Mumbai blasts

The father and the bombmaker

SYED MOHAMMED HANIF Age: 41 Education: Class X pass Occupation: Autorickshaw driver Devout and orthodox, the Gujarat riots gave him nightmares and a desire for revenge. Having learnt how to assemble bombs, he was ready to die for his cause.

The mother and loyal deputy

FAHMIDA HANIF Age: 37 Education: School drop-out Occupation: Housewife She planted two bombs, one in a best bus in July and the other at the Gateway. Work done, she bought vegetables, came home and cooked.

The daughter and young initiate

FARHEEN HANIF Age: 16 Education: Class IX drop-out Occupation: Unemployed Travelled along with her family to the Gateway, fully informed of the plan. Friends say she is fun loving and computer savvy but dominated by her father.

Terrorists didn't look like this, an ordinary family on an ordinary outing. Terrorists didn't have settled homes, jobs, neighbours, a life outside dogma. Terrorists carried guns, not little girls in their laps. They didn't have families. If they did, they never took them to work. After Mumbai's Black Monday, it is clear the old rules don't apply.

When terrorists stormed Parliament or the Akshardham temple complex, they were also faceless but belonged to recognised outfits. They were links in a chain of command that could be identified and even infiltrated, whose violent past and present intent were known, documented and scrutinised. On the other hand, the Hanif family's involvement in not one but two blasts-at the Gateway of India and an earlier one at Ghatkopar-came as a rude awakening to those whose job it is to track and thwart terror and also everyone who lives in a world virtually besieged by it.

For the Hanifs are what counter-terrorist agencies call a "cell". Like the building blocks of human life itself, the terror cell is the starting point for death. When it resembles the Hanifs, a faceless family without a past or a history of agitation, disaffiliated from political groups, with no ties to organised crime or terror, acting independently and randomly, it becomes twice as dangerous as all the known enemies of the state. If this is the new face of terror-and there are reasons to believe that it is-the state it would seem is at war with its own people. For the police and intelligence, Mumbai's first family of terror is an ideal case study of how a group of regular working people were so convinced of their cause that they were willing to risk not just their own lives but also those of their loved ones by including them in their plans.

The story of how the normal, the surreal and the sinister collided in the life of Syed Mohammed Hanif was revealed to the police following the arrest of the family in the Mumbai Police's 48-hour-long manhunt. Fahmida, Hanif's fair 37-year-old wife, confessed to the police that this wasn't the family's first brush with explosives. On July 28, she said she had travelled on the best bus to the prosperous and congested north-eastern suburb of Ghatkopar carrying a bomb in her bag and left it under her seat as she alighted at the penultimate stop. When the bus finished its run, the bomb went off killing four and injuring 32. At the time, Fahmida, like millions of other Mumbai housewives, bought vegetables and groceries at a nearby market, took another bus home, cooked dinner and watched the news. She confessed that along with her accomplice that day, 25-year-old Ashrat Ansari, she had planted a second bomb in the area which was later found and defused.

The police say Fahmida shows no remorse for her actions. When asked about the innocent deaths she had caused, she allegedly said, "It is nothing compared to the rape and murder of innocent, pregnant women in Gujarat." Fahmida, say the police, echoes her husband's virulence and anger at the communal riots in Gujarat, using that emotion to fuel their rage against civil society.

For his neighbours in the thickly congested Salim chawl, Hanif was the quiet, austere 41-year-old "Dubai-returned" electrician. The only time they saw the bearded, well-built and wheatish complexioned man angry was when he argued with his son Irfan because the 18-year-old had passed his Class X exams from the Fidaibaug English-medium school but was obsessed with acting in films. And, some say, because his son was in love with a Hindu girl. Irfan left home, cast out by his disciplinarian father. Hanif's orthodoxy was visible. His wife and elder daughter were not permitted to leave the house without wearing a burqa. Farheen never went outdoors unescorted and, according to Jalees Anwar, the principal of Mapkhan Anjuman High School where Shakira studied, Fahmida would not even let her daughter's female class teacher see her face.

THE INITIATION

Hanif grew up in Mangalore, a sober and devout youth. A Class X pass, he moved to Mumbai for a better job, stayed with his relatives at Telli galli near Marol. In the 1980s he married Fahmida, whose father worked as a peon in Mantralaya. In 1992, he relocated to Saudi Arabia after a Mumbai placement agency found him a job in the electrical department at the Saudi Royal Palace. Two years later, he was able to move his family from a slum colony in Andheri to the better-built chawl, where he was arrested from. A family man at heart, Hanif returned to India in 1999 but when he found that he could not earn as much he again took up a job in Dubai. In Saudi Arabia police believe he had run into hardcore jehadis with links to Pakistan at the local mosques but it was his second stint overseas that they say caused deep-seated changes in the man.

FEMME FATALE: The burqa clad Fahmida at the court

In the emirate, he ran into Zaheed and Nasir, men who were known to have contacts with the banned terrorist outfits Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT). Several months later the three men met Ansari, a zari-worker, who had recently returned from Surat with chilling stories of the communal riots there and in the rest of the state in March last year. In the aftermath of the riots, groups called the Muslim Defence Force or Gujarat Revenge Group began to build the case for vendetta. Among their agitationist propaganda were inflammatory audio and video tapes that depicted how Muslims were targeted during the riots. The tapes carried interviews with riot victims as well as, it is widely believed, footage of Muslim women being abused. The stories of the rape of pregnant women and young girls shook Hanif to the core. "I used to have nightmares of my daughters being targeted by the kafir mobs," Hanif reportedly told the police.

Brainwashed by his friends, Hanif returned to India on September 14, 2002 with revenge on his mind. Nasir, he told the police, had promised him explosives two days before he planned to strike and Hanif had already taken lessons in bomb-making. Hanif took his wife and elder daughter into confidence with stories from Gujarat. He earned their complicity in his plan when he told them that no one would suspect a woman of planting a bomb. When the orders came from the dominant head of the household, the women, as always, fell in line.

In her confession, Fahmida told the police that she followed her husband because she was convinced of his cause for the deen (God). Asma, one of Farheen's friends from Salim chawl, told india today that Farheen was "completely under her father's thumb". She was, Asma remembers, a fun-loving girl who dropped out of the Fidaibaug school and "never talked about boys or marriage but wanted to learn computers and the Internet to be in touch with the world". The 16-year-old, police say, is a little shaken but remains resolute. Farheen told the police, "Maut se kaun darta hai? Hume marne ka dar nahi lagta (Who is afraid of death? at least I am not)." But in a confession that reflected her age, she said she had not expected a half-life in jail either.

SWIFT ACTION: Within a week of the blast, Hanif found himself being taken to court

Additional Commissioner (Crime) of Mumbai Police Rakesh Maria says, "None of them was stirred by the ghastly scenes and deaths they had caused but were emotionally shaken by the mere idea of living without the comfort of the other."

There is a complete disconnection between what the family feels now and what they did in July and August. Hanif had to be admitted to Bhabha Hospital after his blood pressure shot up at the special Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) court. When he saw his younger daughter Shakira outside the custody room begging him to take her home and witnessed Farheen being removed to a remand home-as she is still a minor (her school certificate indicates September 30, 1987 as her date of birth) she would be tried separately from her parents in a juvenile court under the Juvenile Justice Act-he broke down and wept.

THE DAY OF THE BLAST

THE ACCOMPLICE

ASHRAT ANSARI Age: 25 Education: School drop-out Occupation: Zari-worker Ansari, who hails from Surat, met Hanif in Dubai. He brought with him horrific stories from the Gujarat riots which he told Hanif.

It may have been how a father felt. But this is what the adult members of the same father's family did. First they built a new loft at home to store the 205 gelatin sticks, 20 detonators, 12 alarm clocks with timers, electric wires, soldering machines, polyester yarn, fire crackers and a white metal dipper machine. The explosives were provided by Nasir and his accomplices. Nasir and Hanif worked through the night on the macabre business of putting together their bombs. The gelatin sticks, each 6 inches in size and light brown like a Cohiba cigar, were first tied together with polyester yarn. The cigarette-sized detonator, which sets off the explosive, was then inserted into the stack of sticks, its ends soldered to two contact points on an alarm clock. The alarm clock completed the electrical circuit using the cell battery and the bell of the alarm. When the alarm rang hours later, the electric charge would pass through the detonator that would explode and trigger off the gelatin sticks. Putting the bomb fabricated in a tiny squalid room inside the boot of a taxi would amplify the force of the blast and turn the entire vehicle into a bomb. More so because the vehicles were CNG cabs with cylinders in the boot, that could act as force multipliers.

On August 25, well after his neighbour Sheikh had fallen into a deep sleep, Hanif finished the work he was diligently doing with Nasir and at 4 a.m. went to bed for an hour. In the morning, Hanif went to the Madina mosque for the namaz with Nasir and his wife and at 7.30 a.m. were joined by their friend Ansari. When they began to set out on the day's plan, Shakira threw a tantrum on learning she wouldn't be going to school but would accompany her parents for the second day in a row on a long ride. Fahmida calmed her down with the promise to take her to Byculla Zoo. The family then left home for Andheri where taxidriver Shiv Narayan Pandey was already waiting for them. The previous day Hanif had hired Pandey to carry out a dummy run of their plan in order to time themselves. Pandey was asked to take them on another trip the next day.

THE BOOTY: Mumbai Police chief Sharma (right) points to the huge stock of explosives confiscated from Hanif's house which was to be used for further acts of terror

As promised, when they got there Fahmida took Shakira to the Byculla Zoo. In the meantime, the two men were joined by Nasir who had taken a separate route. The men finetuned their getaway details again. Hanif returned to the cab with his family while Nasir took another taxi to Mumbadevi. Nasir is believed to have abandoned the vehicle at Zaveri Bazaar and detonated the bomb. He and his accomplices are still at large.

The Hanifs and Ansari travelled to Dhobi Talao, about 2.5 km from the Gateway of India, where the two men got off. Pandey was told to take the rest to Mumbai's famous landmark. There Fahmida and her daughters alighted and began their long journey back home on a bus.

Hanif took his time returning home and was greeted at the door by his wife with the "good news" that their gruesome task had been a success. According to their neighbours, when they gathered at the common corridors and alleys of the chawls, mournfully discussing the death of the innocents in the twin blasts, Hanif had dismissed it all saying, "It serves them right. It is all God's wish."

MUTE WITNESS: This 10 x12 ft room in Salim chawl where the Hanifs lived, assembled the bombs and worked out their macabre plan

Like everyone else, they were glued to the news channels but while the others sympathised with those killed, the Hanifs, neighbours say, were only curious about the casualties and damage done. A furious Hasina Ismail asks, "It's tough to believe that a simple-looking family was cold-bloodedly watching the results of what they had done on television. What if the bomb had gone off in their house while they were making it?" But there was no room for doubt or hesitation in the minds of the new terrorists. When asked by interrogators about the risks they had put their family to by storing explosives at home, Hanif and Fahmida had only one reply, "Allah ki marzi (God's wish). That nothing happened so far means that God was on our side."

Investigations so far suggest that the blasts were carried out not for monetary gain. Other than the cost of the operations and a little help with the daily expenses at home, the Hanifs made no money from this exercise. Mumbai Police Commissioner R.S. Sharma says, "It appears that a strong commitment to the cause was the motivating force behind the Mumbai blasts."

The pattern suggests that a series of blasts in Mumbai from December 2002 onwards was coordinated by two separate groups-Hanif and family with Ansari as an accomplice and supplier, and another group headed by Saquib Nachan with Dr Abdul Matin Bashit, who are believed to be behind the blasts on a best bus on December 2 and on a train at the Mulund railway station. But what is not clear is who the puppet masters are. Were both cells run by the same leader or were independent groups-mainly LeT and JeM, with logistical support from SIMI and D-Company-who shared common cause? The Mumbai Police are certain that the Hanifs formed a cell which was exposed due to an element of naivete on their own part as they chose not to flee and sheer good fortune-in other words having taxidriver Pandey as witness. The danger is that there could be many more Hanifs, motives memorised and internalised, waiting for their opportunity. In a democracy, formulating a method to identify and filter out the very angry citizen from the merely disgruntled will require both ingenuity and intelligence of a very high quality.