New Delhi: A man who was making hoax calls to Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari after the 26/11 attacks and claiming to be Indian Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, has been identified as Omar Saeed Sheikh - a militant.
Sheikh had posed as Mukherjee and had reportedly threatened Zardari over the phone in a bid to increase tensions between India and Pakistan post 26/11.
Reports say that Sheikh even made a phone call to Pranab Mukherjee and that he got through to an operator handling Mukherjee's calls and told her that he was the President of Pakistan. However, the Indian side grew suspicious of the caller as the normal procedure for placing such a high-level call was not followed and it was never put through to the minister.
Sheikh also made an attempt to talk to the US Secretary of State. He had made the calls from a Britain-registered SIM and much to Islamabad's embarrassment, from inside a jail in Karachi. He is currently confined in a high security cell of Karachi jail, imprisoned for the murder of Wall Street Journal journalist, Daniel Pearl.
Sheikh - who is in jail - got updates on the Mumbai carnage from his wife, Saadia, using his mobile phone secretly. Reports say that he was in touch with the mastermind of the 26/11 carnage, Lashkar-e-Toiba leader Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi.
Sheikh had been released by the BJP-led government in India in exchange for the passengers of the hijacked IC-814 plane in Kandahar.
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