Was the recent Delhi encounter, in which a police officer lost his life, a fallout of the tussle between Mumbai Police and Delhi Police to hog the limelight?

A day after cops in Mumbai arrested five terrorists, it came to light that there were heated arguments between a senior police officer from the Mumbai crime branch and his Delhi counterpart over how to trail Atif Amin

It now transpires that the cops from both the cities were on to him and the Delhi team - in a bid to pre-empt the Mumbai team - barged into flat KL-18 at Batla House, Jamia Nagar, on September 19. "We felt there was no need to plot the encounter so hurriedly and things could have been different had it been planned properly," a senior Mumbai cop said

The Delhi Police team, led by M C Sharma of the special cell, shot dead two alleged Indian Mujaheedin members but Sharma himself was killed in the encounter. Mumbai Police officials claimed on Thursday that they had gathered substantial information about the terror module after detaining Afzal Usmani, who led the cops to IM founder-member Mohammad Sadiq Shaikh. He also spilled the beans on Atif and Mohammad Sajid holed up in Jamia Nagar in Delhi. The officers here claimed to have got the duo’s cell numbers from Afzal.

"We got the Call-Detail Reports (CDR) of both mobiles. Two Mumbai Crime Branch teams left for Delhi two days before the encounter happened and made an official request to the service-provider to keep the numbers under surveillance," a police officer said.

But the service-provider turned down the request, saying the numbers were already under observation following a Delhi Police request. "We were told that they had been instructed not to allow any other agency access to the details of the calls," a police officer, who was part of the team, said.

The irked officers then informed their seniors in Mumbai and, a day before the encounter, a senior Mumbai Police officer spoke to his Delhi counterpart and the service-provider. "There was a heated argument between the two officers; the Delhi officer insisted he would not part with the details," a senior police officer said.

It was then that the Delhi cops, apprehending that officers from Mumbai might track down Atif and walk away with the honours, decided to nab Atif. "The entire area was cordoned off before the Mumbai Police team could reach Batla House and the Mumbai officials were denied entry," an official said.