The nub of a successful anti-terrorist operation lies in the initial hours of an attack when
a delay by the first responders could mean the difference between success and catastrophic
failure. In Mumbai on 26/11, most of the mistakes, it now transpires, took place in the
initial hours. The first responders were the Mumbai city police. Unable to distinguish a
fidayeen attack from an underworld shootout, hobbled by a lack of even basic firearms,
inadequate anti-terror forces and a clueless senior leadership, the men in khaki lost the
plot.
Mumbai police overlooked standard drills
A year after 26/11, has anything really changed?
The National Security Guard (NSG) commandos arrived in the city nearly seven hours after
they had been mobilised at their base in Manesar on the outskirts of Delhi. They had to play
a deadly game of cat and mouse against 10 hardened, motivated and well-trained terrorists
with enough ammunition to last days. During the three-day siege, nearly 900 hotel rooms
could not be entirely cleared of guests. When the dust had settled on one of India's longest
anti-terrorist operations, the mistakes were glaring.
09.30 p.m.
Inability to distinguish between terror attack and gang war
The confusion surrounding the attack gave enough time for the terrorists to wreak havoc
At 9.38 on Wednesday night, two Lashkar gunmen Abdul Rehman and Abu Umer tossed in grenades
and sprayed bullets from their assault rifles at the hapless diners in Leopold Cafe,
starting a 60-hour siege of Mumbai. For the next half-hour, the five fidayeen buddy pairs
ran through South Mumbai, wreaking havoc with guns and grenades. In the span of half an
hour, calls of attacks at multiple locations kept pouring into the police control room. The
initial assessment: it was an underworld attack. Two IEDs, which the terrorists planted in
taxis after boarding them soon after alighting from the rubber dinghy at Colaba, went off at
separate places in Vile Parle and Crawford Market an hour later. This further added to the
confusion. It took the police nearly three hours to decide that it was a terror attack.
These precious hours allowed the terrorists to achieve complete surprise and gain the
dominant ground at the Oberoi and Taj Mahal hotels, Nariman House, and take hostages.
10.00 p.m.
Mumbai Police outgunned
The Mumbai Police's obsolete weaponry was no match for the terrorists'automatic weapons
The Lashkar gunmen came armed with AK-47s, grenades and IEDs. Ranged against them was the
Mumbai Police constabulary who made a feeble attempt to respond with vintage weaponry. The
results were heartbreaking, and nowhere was this more evident than the platforms of the CST
station where Ajmal Amir Kasab and Abu Ismail strolled about firing at passengers. After the
gunfire started, many railway police personnel ran across to the railway police storeroom a
few blocks away to fetch their weapons. One of them who did try and fire at the fidayeen duo
found that his archaic .303 rifle jammed after firing a single round. In sheer frustration,
a policeman even flung a plastic chair at the terrorists. At other places like the Taj and
Oberoi, policemen found their 9 mm pistols were no match for the barrage from Kalashnikovs
and area denial weapons like Arges hand grenades. ATS chief Hemant Karkare lay dead an hour
later, let down by a bulletproof vest of dubious quality which the state Home Department had
purchased in circumstances that are yet to be explained. In the first three hours, 16 Mumbai
policemen, including eight officers, were killed.
10.30 p.m.
No planned or coordinated response from the Mumbai Police
With no rapid action plan, the police was in disorder and senior officers were out tackling
terrorists
When the police finally decided a terror attack was underway, they did not respond
effectively. Both Bhagwant D. More, joint commissioner (Administration) and K.L. Prasad,
joint commissioner (Law and Order), who should have been in charge of the control room were
out tackling the terror situation. Though police commissioner Hasan Gafoor was found parked
outside the Oberoi soon after the terror attacks began, he made no attempt to coordinate
with other officers, the Quick Reaction Team or even with the NSG who came in later. Gafoor
was, quite literally, caught napping. Instead, it was Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime)
Rakesh Maria who took command and state Chief Secretary Johny Joseph manned the control room
at Mantralaya and called in the local army unit and the Marine Commandos (Marcos). Maria was
handling the situation from the control room in the police commissioner's headquarters at
Crawford Market and state police chief A.N. Roy at the police headquarters near the Taj.
The initial lack of central coordination turned the operation into individual acts of
courage, whether it was rescuing hostages or attending to the injured. The stand-off could
have ended earlier had the police evacuated the guests at the Taj and Oberoi once the Marcos
had entered.
11.50 p.m.
Killing of the ATS leadership
The death of three senior ATS officials was a serious psychological blow to the Mumbai
Police
Soon after Kasab and Ismail fled the CST station and entered the nearby Cama Hospital and
took hostages, three senior ATS officials reached the spot from different directions-
Karkare, Additional Commissioner Ashok Kamte and senior inspector Vijay Salaskar. They were
responding to a police control alert which warned of terrorists at the hospital. Armed with
AK-47s and donning bulletproof jackets, the trio bundled into a police jeep with their
bodyguards and headed towards the terrorists who had, by then, fled the hospital. In
hindsight, the jeep ride proved to be a critical error of judgement.
When splitting up into small teams to pursue the two terrorists on foot would have been an
easier option, sitting in the vehicle made the policemen easy targets and restricted their
firing options. The jeep with the three senior police officers packed in the front seat was
ambushed by the two terrorists. A hail of bullets killed the leadership of the Maharashtra
ATS, which severely demoralised an already shaken police force and resigned it to waiting
for anti-terrorist forces.
12 midnight
Mumbai Police failed to engage the terrorists at the Taj Hotel
Apart from lack of arms, there were not enough policemen to keep the pressure up on
terrorists
For three crucial hours after the attack, all the four terrorists were holed up in the upper
floors of the Taj after killing over 20 persons in the lobby. The policemen who engaged them
for the first few hours were too few in number to prove effective to maintain 'contact' with
the terrorists. Contact is the military term which refers to the act of keeping the enemy
pinned down in a firefight; it puts the enemy on the defensive and prevents them from moving
or achieving their objectives. What the police lacked in firepower, they could have made up
in sheer numbers but sufficient policemen were not deployed in the hotel. Contact was broken
and the terrorists left to have a free run of the hotel as the police waited first for the
Marcos and later the NSG to arrive. It was at least three hours before the Marine Commandos
arrived and resumed the engagement with the terrorists at around 2.30 a.m. By then, the four
terrorists had valuable time to study the layout of the hotel; they were also being
constantly briefed by their handlers in Pakistan.
09.00 a.m.
The NSG arrived late
The bureaucratic hurdles that led to further delay of the NSG proved advantageous for the
terrorists
The NSG was alerted within two hours of the attacks but it took them nearly seven hours to
reach the besieged city. They were summoned by Home Secretary Madhukar Gupta who called NSG
chief J.K. Dutt at around 11.30 p.m. The commandos were first transported by road from their
base in Manesar, Haryana, nearly 28 km from Delhi airport because they did not have
dedicated airlift like helicopters with night-flying capability. At least an hour was spent
at the airport loading the aircraft and waiting for home minister Shivraj Patil who then
accompanied the Black Cats on their flight to Mumbai. When the NSG eventually arrived at
Sahar airport at 5 a.m., they were bundled into BEST buses and taken to the Mantralaya for a
briefing. It was nine in the morning by the time they reached the two hotels. The second
batch of commandos arrived, but was not briefed. All attention was focused on the Taj and
Oberoi hotels; nobody was aware of the hostage situation at Nariman House where Abu Akasha
and Abu Umar were holding Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife hostage, along with four
others.
09.00 a.m.
No detailed layouts or maps of the buildings under attack
Relying on hotel staff and locals delayed the rescue of hostages and prolonged operations
One of the precepts of a successful building intervention operation conducted by anti-terror
forces is a detailed knowledge of the layouts of the buildings to be assaulted. This is why
special forces often stock building plans of all vulnerable areas and buildings, and
sometimes even practice mock hostage rescue drills in them. In Mumbai, the terrorists had
the advantage of a detailed hostile reconnaissance conducted, as it is now suspected, by
David Headley and Tahawwur Rana.
Later, the 10 terrorists who had arrived at the three spots at least 12 hours before the
NSG, evidently had plenty of time to study the layouts of the buildings and site their
defences. These were crucial lapses which played a decisive part in prolonging the siege. At
all three locations-the Oberoi, Taj and Nariman House-NSG commandos went in blind without
having the building plans of the structures. Most of them were entering the hotels for the
first time. They either relied on their instincts or on locals or employees to find their
way around the darkened buildings. Not only did they have the challenging task of locating
and rescuing guests in over 1,000 hotel rooms at the Taj and Oberoi , but they had to
simultaneously fight the terrorists as well.
11.00 a.m.
No unified, consistent communication with the public
With no one-point source of information,everyone was out feeding the media, leading to
further chaos
Among the basic rules of media briefing in a crisis is a unified, consistent communication
from a single reliable point of contact. During the Kargil War, there were just two
spokespersons, one for the Foreign Ministry and another for the armed forces. In Mumbai, not
just there was no single spokesperson. The state government did not even set up a media
briefing room. Evidently, mirroring the chaos after the breakdown of command and control, a
sheer diversity of officials took over to brief the media. Everyone, from the NSG chief, the
GOC-in-C Maharashtra and Gujarat Area, the southern army commander and the western naval
command chief, were briefing the media or giving interviews during the conduct of
operations. Maharashtra chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh who returned to the city at 3 a.m.
on November 27 maintained a stoic silence.
12.00 midnight
Intercepts of conversations not given to the NSG
Not passing on the information delayed the conclusion of operation and saving of lives
What made the 26/11 strikes chillingly different from others were the sentient voices of
Pakistan-based handlers advising the terrorists on strategy, firing tactics, giving regular
news updates and pep talks. Many of these mobile phone conversations were quickly
intercepted by the ATS but were not passed on to the NSG commandos waiting outside the
buildings. In hindsight, these conversations could have helped pinpoint the location of
terrorists and save lives. In the case of Nariman House, intercepted conversations revealed
that Akasha and Umar were using the hostages as bargaining chips with the Israeli
Government. By the evening of November 27, the handler had instructed the terrorists to kill
them. This information was not passed on to the Black Cats who are trained to storm a
building when the death of the hostages is imminent. Nariman House was overrun only the next
morning when the hostages were already killed.
07.30 a.m.
No efforts made to block live telecast of the operation
Live telecast of the rescue operations by the media made it easier for terrorists to plan
their response
Technology was a double-edged sword during the operations. If it allowed anxious friends and
relatives to keep in touch with their besieged kin through cellphones, it also enabled the
terrorists to keep in touch with their handlers in Pakistan. Inadvertently helping these
handlers were the news TV cameras at various spots, broadcasting live footage of the
operations. One emotional MP, part of a parliamentary committee delegation of four MPs
staying at the Taj, went live on TV. After watching it, an LeT handler directed the
terrorists to go look for the lawmakers and take them hostage. Crucial information like the
arrival of the NSG was also broadcast, allowing terrorists to plan a response.
At the Oberoi, the NSG erected a 500-m cordon around the hotel allowing the Black Cats to
enter and carry out the operations in conditions of a near total blackout. At the Taj,
however, the media continued to show live footage even 48 hours after the attack began. The
media was directed to telecast a 'deferred' live programme after instructions from the
Information and Broadcasting Ministry on the afternoon of November 28.
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