The terrorists, who carried out the dastardly attack in Mumbai, had been instructed by their masters in Pakistan to take hostages and make demands through the media, according to the lone surviving suspect Mohammad Ajmal Amir.

Ajmal's statement recorded by Mumbai police gives details of the intensive training given to 10 terrorists who killed 183 people, when they struck this metropolis on the evening of November 26.

Actually 32 young men were trained initially out of which five teams of two each were dispatched for Mumbai from Karachi three days earlier via sea.

According to police sources, Ajmal has stated that originally they were instructed to carry out firing at rush hours in the morning between 7 and 11 am and the same hours in the evening.

The plan was to kidnap some persons and take them to the roof of some nearby building, the 21-year-old resident of Faridkot village in Pakistan's Punjab province has said. From there, the terrorists were to contact "chacha" (uncle), their trainer whose full name is Zaki-Ur-Rahman.

Zaki-Ur-Rahman Lakhvi is the chief of operations of Lashkar-e Toiba (LeT), one of the four persons declared terrorists last week by the UN Security Council, which had also designated Jamaat-ud Dawa (JuD) and two of its sister organisations, Al-Rashid Trust and Al-Akhtar Trust, as terrorist groups.

"After that chacha would give the telephone or mobile numbers of the electronic media. We were then to contact the media persons on the same phone," Ajmal said.

As per 'chacha's' instructions, the terrorists would then make demands for releasing the hostages. This was the general strategy by their trainers.

Police sources said the fact that the terrorist duo that opened fire in the CST station did not take any hostages or make any demands indicates either their plot went wrong or their masterminds might have misled them into believing that once they took hostages they can make demands for their own exit from India.

On that pretext they would have been coaxed into believing that even after they create the mayhem there are chances of their escaping from India. The date fixed for the operation was September 27 this year. However, the operation was cancelled for some reason.

They stayed in Karachi where they made practice of travelling by speed boats on the sea. They stayed there up to November 23, three days before the launch of the attack in Mumbai.

On November 23 the five teams of two each, including Ajmal's, left from Azizabad, Karachi along with Zaki-Ur-Rehman and another person.

"We were taken to the nearby sea shore. At 0415 hours we reached the sea shore. At the sea shore we boarded a launch. After travelling for 22 to 25 nautical miles we met a bigger launch in the sea. We boarded the said launch and after journey of one hour we boarded a bigger ship by name Al-Huseini in the deep sea," says Ajmal.

While boarding the said ship each one of them was given a sack containing eight grenades, one A K 47 rifle, 200 cartridges, two magazines and one cell phone for communication. Then they started towards the Indian coast.