Culled from IndiaToday.In

At 6.30 p.m. on December 3, a week after the terror attacks, two bags containing 8 kg of potently explosive RDX were found on platform number 15 at the crowded Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) in Mumbai.

The bag containing RDX was found in rucksacks like the ones used by the terrorists among the luggage of victims stacked in one corner of the terminus. This is a city on the edge and a police force that is supposed to have been alert. You would imagine that following the attack at CST, the police would have mopped the place for any evidence, sniffer dogs must have been deployed and the luggage sanitised. Yet a week later, the explosive was sitting at CST awaiting discovery. It’s as if India’s worstever terrorist attack had not happened.

It is this casualness, the lack of capacity to comprehend and act, that allowed terrorists to plan and execute what is now being called India’s 9/11 that claimed 173 lives and left 288 wounded.

The bloodbath at The Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus

The basics, who could do what, where, when, why and how that determines the core of counter terrorism strategy, was lost in a maze of politics.

Thomas Kean, who headed the National Commission to probe the 9/11 attacks in the US had observed that the attack reflected not just a failure of intelligence but the failure of policy, management, capability and above all a “failure of imagination”. He could have been talking about the 26/11 attacks by terrorists across Mumbai. The terrorists chose to come by sea, target the twin towers of the Taj and Oberoi, attacked a crowded rail terminus, planned to blow up an airport and internationalised their cause by targeting foreigners and above all a Jewish outreach centre at Nariman House.

Click here to Enlarge

At least six intelligence reports from the Research & Analysis Wing dating from September to as late as November 19 pointed out the possibility of a sea-borne fidayeen attack.

The Taj Hotel and the CST station were among the attacks repeatedly referred to. Yet the terrorists had a free run of the coast, landed without trouble and struck at will. Predictably, the state Government claims it got no warnings and the Centre insists it did warn the state. Typically in the Indian tradition, everyone is responsible but nobody is accountable.

A reconstruction of the events reveals that everything that could have gone wrong went wrong. The city has been a sitting duck for such an attack. The coastline, for instance, is patrolled by three agencies—the Navy on the high seas, the Coast Guard and the Marine Patrol. The Navy absolved itself that it patrols the high seas. The Coast Guard took cover under the issue of scale. After all, there are 5,000 trawlers and checking them all is impossible.

Also the landing happened in the domain of the coast patrolled by the Marine Police. Under the Marine Fishing Regulation Act (MFRA), enforced since 1993-94, the Centre provides 100 per cent assistance to states on capital costs of patrol boats and communication equipment to be used for patrolling. Yet states have failed to implement the scheme.

Click here to Enlarge

According to the Comptroller and Auditor General, Maharashtra refused to pick up the tab for maintenance and underutilised the funds. Ergo, the police, believe it or not, has just five boats—of which two are non-functional—to patrol the 760 km of Maharashtra coastline. To get a sense of the callousness that marks governance, consider this: the terrorists could have hit the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre if they had travelled just a few miles down, the naval installations or oil refineries in the western coast. Imagine the damage and the consequences.

Capability on ground zero is no better. When the terrorists struck almost simultaneously at three different locations, the Mumbai Police found itself battling the foes with pathetic leadership, poor coordination and outdated methods and weapons. There was poor assessment too. At around 9.15 p.m. on November 26, the Director-General of Police A.N. Roy, Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) chief Hemant Karkare and the Deputy Chief Minister R.R. Patil finished a meeting and were headed home when the first calls came. The first assessment: gang war shootout outside Leopold Cafe.

As the attack escalated, officers rushed to the locations. Despite knowing that the terrorists were armed with AK-47s, the top brass of Mumbai Police hit the road with archaic weapons like carbines and 9mm pistols. The CST encounter is truly an Indian story. While Police Inspector Shashank Shinde was battling the terrorists, the railway police officials were not even armed. They had to rush to the weapons room to fetch their rifles. By the time they returned, the terrorists had killed 58 and Shinde was dead. Contrast this with the terrorists. Each carried a Kalashnikov, nine magazines with 30 rounds each, 150 spare bullets, nine grenades and a pistol with five magazines of 18 rounds each. And there were only 35 ATS members to deal with the enormity of the crisis. A200-member commando force created in 1999 was disbanded by subsequent regimes.

he saga of equipment is a tragedy. Nearly 18 months back, P.S. Pasricha as director-general of police mooted upgrading of weapons. Thanks to the bickering between finance, planning and home departments, the proposal got “in-principle” approval last month. At this speed the police won’t get their weapons till 2010. The.303 rifles are out of production, there is no ammunition produced and therefore cannot be tested in the firing range. In many cases the guns jammed too. At CST, Constable Ajit Kumar Nalavade took position behind the drinking water taps and fired three rounds at a terrorist before his carbine jammed.

The bullet-proof vests worn by the officers also did not provide defence against AK-56 and AK-47 gunfire. In 2004, samples of these vests were sent to the firing range. Every bullet from SLRs and AK-47s went through the jacket even though the rounds were fired from a distance. Says former IPS officer Y.P. Singh: “More than Rs 100 crore is spent every year under the name of police modernisation but the jackets used are of very poor quality.” If Nagappa Mali and his team did manage to nab the terrorists at Girgaum Chowpatty, it was providence and uncommon bravery as none of the cops wore bullet-proof jackets.

Two of the bombs planted by terrorists exploded in taxis in Vile Parle

The gunning down of Karkare, Inspector Vijay Salaskar and Additional Commissioner of Police Ashok Kamte in an ambush shows how ill-prepared the force is and the total absence of training, strategy or tactics through the crisis. Indeed Roy admits that “the response was very prompt but whether they were capable of neutralising terrorists is something that needs to be looked into”. This admission, in a state racked by three serious terror attacks, tells the story of apathy. Within the hour when the two hotels and CST were targeted, it should have been clear that this was a major terrorist strike.

In theory, the crisis management group headed by the chief secretary and its members should have met within the hour. In Mumbai, the chief secretary was at home, the crisis room was manned by the DGP, Patil and senior officers and Home Secretary Chitkala Zutshi was among those trapped at the Sea Lounge in the Taj and calling for help. Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh was in Kerala and reached Mumbai only at 3 a.m. The state Government didn’t lack advice. Last Monday Deshmukh announced the creation of a Maharashtra Security Council to advise the state. A similar council was also formed with army and police officials in September 2006 following the Mumbai serial blasts. Lieutenant General D.B. Shekatkar, a council member who has over 20 years of experience in “insurgency and terror” ops, reveals that the council has not met since August 2007. Worse, its suggestions—including one to strengthen coastal patrolling and involving the Koli community—were largely ignored.

This neglect clearly contributed to creating the landscape for the terrorists to strike at will. The desperate calls for help from Zutshi and other hostages in hotels should have prompted the state to call for the NSG. But it wasn’t till midnight that the state asked for help from the Centre. Precious hours lost could have saved lives. When they did reach Mumbai at 6 a.m. on November 27, those watching television the world over were treated to the pathetic sight of them being transported in BEST buses.

The NSG itself did a good job but that they took 50 hours to clear the Taj raises questions.

Yes, they operated blind without maps while the terrorists seem to know the Taj very well. And yes they have not had training for urban guerrilla warfare. Yet counter terrorism experts ask why it took so long? Why was gas not used in the operations? In Operation Black Thunder, the NSG had used yellow phosphorus to smoke out terrorists. But inexplicably this wasn’t done in Mumbai. What is unpardonable is that even this elite force is starved of equipment. Forget the high-end stuff like UAVs or mobile command posts, troopers fought without the basic equipment. Minutes before they took off from Delhi, Black Cats were frantically dialling for ballistic vests to be delivered at the airport. The crisis was aggravated by failure of leadership and total collapse of the system. For instance, though the Trident was secured, hostages were not evacuated till November 28 even though Police Commissioner Hasan Gafoor was parked right outside the hotel.

Even basic information systems were absent. There was no system to guide anxious relatives on who was hurt, killed or held hostage. Rumours ruled the roost. The police didn’t know how many terrorists had entered the city. First they said 12, then Deshmukh and Patil said “about 25” and finally 10 have been accounted for. But doubts persist. Were there more ? Did they check into the hotels or work there? How did they keep going for 50 hours? Did they pre-plant the ammunition? The blasts at Vile Parle and Wadi Bunder are yet a mystery. Who planted them? Was the airport the target? Over 700 people were evacuated from the hotels without checks. Did some terrorists escape? Are they out there? These queries will haunt Mumbai and India in the coming days.

On Friday night as the crisis dragged on, Patil asked Roy if the Mumbai Police could add to the NSG force to storm the Taj. Gafoor who had already lost men put his foot down. He revealed that they were simply not equipped or trained for this. The average policeman is bogged down in bandobast duties through the year and fires less than five bullets at the training range (compared to 150 by any commando force). They were and would have been sitting ducks. That is shocking. But that politicians and babudom have allowed matters to come to such a pass is chilling. It is this rot which passes for security in Mumbai and it is this stench that has fuelled the anger across Mumbai and India.