Mumbai, Dec. 10: Just 222 days — and may be a handful more — are what day labourer Mohammed Ajmal Amir Iman took to turn terrorist, according to a statement attributed to him.

The statement purportedly made by Ajmal to police in Mumbai traces the career of the young man of 21 who claims he joined the Lashkar-e-Toiba just to learn skills in use of weapons and further a career in crime.

The statement has been released by police sources in Mumbai ( ). But no wing of the police has officially admitted putting together the statement that has no legal standing because it has not been recorded before a magistrate.

But if what Ajmal has been quoted as saying is true, it is a chilling negation of the notion that hardcore terrorists are indoctrinated right from their formative years, often backed by a stiff dose of religious discourse.

Unlike the ideologically driven Palestine terrorists such as Abu Nidal and his Fatah mercenaries who fought for a cause they were married to from their boyhood, the modern-day terrorist can well be born in just over seven months, if the statement attributed to Ajmal is an indication.

The duration of training is shorter than a professional computer course, which could last a year or more, and throws up attractive options for youths like Ajmal who are on the lookout for a shortcut to big money.

Nothing in Ajmal’s statements thus far to the police has suggested that the boy from a poor family near Multan was influenced by or exposed to hardline or militant religious sermon during his growing years.

According to the statement, Ajmal says he was not content earning Rs 200 per day in the catering business in Lahore. Given his limited education — Ajmal studied till Standard IV — the young man, along with one Muzaffar Lal Khan, decided to carry out a robbery to become rich.

On Bakri-Id in 2007, which was celebrated on December 20, they went to Lashkar stalls selling firearms in Rawalpindi, but realised they could not operate them. Hence, the duo visited the Lashkar office and offered to sign up for training in weapons.

Their first camp was at Muridke, near Lahore, where they spent 21 days attending a basic course called Daura-Sufa. That done, Ajmal was selected for a more intensive weapons course called Daura-Ama at Mansera, which again lasted three weeks. The cadets were then asked to carry out Khidmat — a camp service — for two months.

After a break, according to the statement, he underwent an intensive three-month training called Daura-Khas, in Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-held Kashmir. Here, he learnt how to handle weapons such as grenades, rocket launchers and mortars.

Ajmal says it was at this camp that cadets were shown clippings of atrocities allegedly committed on minorities in India: the first attempt to give a religious colour to the training.

He returned home to Faridkot village for a week before leaving for Muzaffarabad from where 13 cadets were picked to go to Muridke for marine training for a month.

The training, he says, came to fruition when on September 15 this year, he was selected for the operation in Mumbai as part of a two-member module codenamed VTS.

The transformation was complete for Ajmal alias Abu Mujahid. It had taken all of 222 days of training from Bakri-Id of 2007 to September 15 this year (a total of 270 days) — not counting his two breaks of a month and then for a week to be with parents — for Ajmal to become a jihadi. In the statement, two other camps are mentioned without duration. Ajmal could have spent some of the remaining 11 days in the two camps.

A Mumbai police official confirmed Ajmal was trained by Lashkar commander Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi and Kafa among others. Both names have been mentioned in the statement attributed to Ajmal.