Indian police said on Saturday they had arrested two men who helped the Mumbai attackers get mobile phone cards which they used for communications during their three-day rampage. Police in the eastern city of Kolkata identified the men as Tausif Rehman and Mukhtar Ahmed and said they were picked up on Friday after investigators traced some of the Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) cards recovered from the gunmen. “We are questioning them about procurement of SIM cards used in Mumbai,” Jawed Shamim, deputy commissioner of detectives in Kolkata, told Reuters. Meanwhile, a senior police official in Kashmir says the man, identified as Mukhtar Ahmed, is part of a semiofficial counter-insurgency network whose members are usually drawn from among former militants. The official says Kolkata police, who are holding Ahmed, have been told he is “our man and it s now up to them how to facilitate his release.” The officer spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the information. Airports in New Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai remained on high alert for a fourth day on Saturday, with extra security personnel deployed after India's civil aviation authority said it had received intelligence that attacks could be planned. Security was also high in the north Indian town of Ayodhya on Saturday, the 16th anniversary of the razing of the Babri Mosque by a Hindu extremist mob which set off Hindu-Muslim riots that killed thousands. A makeshift Hindu temple now stands there. Earlier, 15 Hindu activists demanding a permanent temple be built were arrested in nearby Faizabad while Muslim activists who ordinarily fly a black flag on the anniversary opted not to.
