David Headley, the US national of Pakistani origin charged with plotting the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai, had claimed that he had an arms licence back home in the US for a popular semi-automatic rifle and wanted to know if there were firing ranges in India he could use, said Rahul Bhatt, son of filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt.
Headley also seemed to know south Mumbai — where all the 26/11 attacks took place — extremely well and had, after the September 2008 bombing of the Marriott hotel in Islambad, remarked that “things like that” would happen in India too, Bhatt told The Indian Express.
Yet Bhatt, 28, who along with his friend and fitness trainer Vilas Varak is being investigated by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) for their friendship with Headley, thought the American he had nicknamed ‘Agent Headley' was just a charmer and a good conversationalist and did not suspect anything amiss.
“This is where I met Headley for the first time,” Bhatt said, speaking in the company of Varak at a popular café in the upmarket Bandra suburb. “Vilas was training him. Headley wanted my advice on sports nutrition. To my knowledge, he was running an immigration agency in Mumbai and that was it.”
“We just hit it off and became friendly. Our discussions ranged from fitness, health, body-building, food, travel and guns. He said he had an arms licence back home in America for an AR-15 rifle and used to ask me whether we had firing ranges in India where we could go,” Bhatt said.
During all his association with the terror suspect, Bhatt said he could never guess Headley had Pakistani roots. “He was completely American in his conduct. He spoke like a Yank,” he said. Headley did not discuss his personal life with his two Mumbai friends and never mentioned his family either. Pakistan cropped up fleetingly in conversations. One of those occasions was after the bombing of the Marriott hotel in Islamabad two months before 26/11.
“You know guys, you are going to see things like that happening now in this country too,” Headley is supposed to have said. But Bhatt says he treated this too as a passing remark. “I thought it was just a comment. Everybody was saying the same thing. Any layman could also have said that. I took it in that spirit,” said Bhatt.
Headley, Bhatt and Varak also dined at the Taj Mahal Palace and Towers once in 2007, one of the main targets of 26/11 where Headley had also allegedly stayed more than once and even made videos of its interiors on two occasions according to the FBI.
“It was on Headley's recommendation. He didn't even leave the table once,” Bhatt said, recalling the meal at the hotel. “I always got a sense that he loved it here. He didn't ask too many questions. He knew south Bombay well in the sense that he could navigate his way there.”
Bhatt said he remembers one instance when Headley asked him to visit Pakistan with him to get a first-hand experience of the gun bazaars of Peshawar and go to the tribal areas of Waziristan — an experience which Headley felt would help Bhatt in his acting debut in his father's production, Suicide Bomber, based on the 07/07 London bombings.
When Bhatt expressed his apprehension, Headley apparently assured him that they would be safe as a convoy of Pajeros would escort them. “It didn't strike me what he is saying. I thought that anyways Yanks have a presence in Pakistan so maybe he is well-connected like that. I didn't suspect anything,” Bhatt said.
“Headley used to tell me to get a US visa from his agency since he felt I had that intensity in me that I could become an action hero in Hollywood,” Bhatt said. “We used to have lots of conversations regarding the film,” Bhatt said referring to Suicide Bomber, which never got made. “He had lots of insights, I liked tapping his brain about stuff like terrorism and counter-terrorism. I was living my role of a suicide bomber at that time and since Headley came to me, I thought I'll take this as an opportunity to prep for my role.”
Headley, Bhatt and Varak usually hung out at the same Bandra cafe, Indigo restaurant in Colaba and would even catch up for the odd Hollywood movie. Among the films they saw together was the Dennis Quaid- Matthew Fox starrer, Vantage Point, which is about the attempted assassination of the American President. “He loved talking about spy movies and secret services and whenever I asked him how he knows so much, he used to say he got all his knowledge from the Internet,” said Bhatt.
Bhatt and Varak both deny ever going to Headley's house in the Breach Candy area where he is known to have lived although Varak said he once went to Headley's immigration office in Tardeo's AC Market. Headley was apparently quite friendly with Varak too. He would tease Varak by calling him “Akbar”, in an attempt to poke fun at Varak's family's pro-Hindutva leanings and “get a reaction out of me”, said Varak.
Bhatt said that life for him and Varak had changed drastically since Headley was arrested and that he is still to come to terms with Headley's “betrayal” and the fact that Headley and the Lashkar-e-Toiba used ‘Rahul' as a codename to refer to India. “It's shocking. I lie awake in night thinking what did he want of me? Did he want to blow me up?” he asked.
While both friends continue to be questioned by the NIA, Varak said his mobile phone had been seized and taken to Hyderabad for forensic investigations. “We are being seen with suspicion when we haven't done anything wrong. We are innocent but we have to wait for a clean chit,” Bhatt said.
