As terrorist gunmen ran amok in Mumbai on the night of November 26, Rakesh Maria, a detective whose exploits regularly inspire Bollywood’s thriller makers, found himself facing the most valuable captive he is ever likely to interrogate.

The prisoner was Azam Amir Kasab, 21, allegedly the sole Mumbai gunman to be taken alive, who made his first public appearance in a special bomb-proof courtroom inside Mumbai's high-security Arthur Road jail today.

During the opening moments of what would become a 60-hour ordeal, Mr Kasab and an accomplice allegedly shot dead 58 people at Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, the city’s main railway station – an assault on working-class commuters that would account for a third of the Mumbai attack’s total death toll. Nine other gunmen were killed.

Mr Kasab, who is accused of being a footsoldier for the Islamist Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist faction, allegedly failed in his bid for martyrdom when the car he and Ismail Khan had stolen ran into a police roadblock. While Khan was shot dead, Mr Kasab was captured.

“In those first moments he was in our custody, I had just four questions,” Mr Maria told The Times. “How many terrorists? How well armed? What were their plans? How did they get here?”

The blunt questions stood at odds with the subtle detective work for which Mr Maria, the head of Mumbai’s Crime Branch, is renowned.

The 50-year-old detective, who would appear almost boyish if it were not for the heavy bags under his eyes, is famous for wheedling confessions out of murder suspects by making audacious bluffs. He made his name during the investigation into the terrorist blasts that claimed 257 lives in Mumbai in 1993 – a case he cracked with the help of a scooter key that linked the veteran smuggler Tiger Memon to the atrocity.

That single clue laid bare a nexus of underworld involvement and led to more than 100 convictions.

According to Mr Maria, on the first night of the November attack, Mr Kasab showed signs of having been trained to withstand interrogation, but soon broke down.

The police chief quickly got his answers: 10 terrorists armed with AK56 automatic rifles (the Chinese version of the AK47), pistols, grenades and other explosives had arrived by sea from Pakistan, Mr Kasab told Mr Maria.

The militants had broken up into smaller units and fanned out across Mumbai to kill as many people as possible.

“Kasab was relatively forthcoming,” Mr Maria said, dismissing suggestions that his men resorted to torture – something the Mumbai force has been accused of in the past. “Real interrogation never works like that. It’s not as you see it in the films,” he said.

The nuggets of information were the first to be unearthed in an investigation that will be the focus of global attention as Mr Kasab’s trial proceeds. Charged with murder and waging war on India, the Pakistani national faces death by hanging if convicted.

Mr Maria, who has worked 15-hour days on the Kasab case for the past four months, knows the limits of what the gunman can reveal directly. “We have here a limb, not the brain, of this terrorist organisation,” he said.

His investigation, however, is enormously ambitious in its reach and many onlookers believe it has one over-riding aim: the establishment of Pakistani state involvement in the Mumbai attacks.

The case against Mr Kasab compiled by Mr Maria has resulted in a massive 11,000 page charge sheet. It names 37 other suspects, 35 of whom are Pakistani. They include at least one serving member of the Pakistani Army, Colonel Saadat Ullah, who is alleged to have helped to set up the internet telephony system through which the gunmen received instruction from their Pakistan-based handlers.

Proving the involvement of a Pakistani soldier would be an explosive development on the part of India, one that would weigh heavily on the already strained relationship between the nuclear armed neighbours. Mr Maria, famous for keeping his cool under pressure, appears undaunted.

“My boys have ferreted out the real conspiracy behind the attack,” he said. “The danger we have exposed is not only to India, but to the whole world. The sooner the world realises that, the better.”

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