Terrorists who attacked Mumbai this week planned to kill 5,000 people, a senior minister said Saturday, according to a news agency report.
"So much of ammunition was found in their possession that it is evident that they had plans to kill 5,000 people," said Maharashtra state Home Minister RR Patil, quoted by the PTI news agency.
Mumbai is the capital of the state of Maharashtra, which lies in India's west.
Patil did not specify the quantity of explosives found, but said a large amount of ammunition was found with one captured terrorist, dpa reported.
"So one can imagine that others also carried similar ammunition. Police found a large quantity of hand grenades, bombs and hundreds of rounds with the terrorists", he said.
Two boxes containing eight kilogrammes of high intensity explosive RDX were found near the Taj hotel, which was cleared of terrorists on Saturday.
The terrorists also had plans to blow up the Taj, the NDTV network reported, quoting official sources. Those officials added that the captured gunman admitted he belonged to the Pakistan-based militant outfit Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT).
He said the terrorists were all between 18 to 28 years and came from Karachi, Pakistan's capital, the report said.
Another news channel, Times Now TV, reported the militant told Indian interrogators that they wanted to go down in history for an "Indian 9/11" and were inspired by the terrorist bombing of Islamabad's Marriott hotel in September.