By mid-September, Indian agencies knew that the attack would come from the sea, by mid-November, they knew that the Taj hotel would be targeted... And yet... and yet... A blow by blow account of how the plan to attack Mumbai by sea was hatched and executed
In mid-September this year, the CIA station chief in Delhi sought an urgent
meeting with his counterpart in R&AW to pass on some critical inputs.
This was part of an understanding that Indian and American intelligence had
institutionalised in the aftermath of 9/11. From its assets in Pakistan and
Afghanistan, American intelligence had come to learn that the
Lashkar-e-Toiba was planning to launch a major terrorist attack in Mumbai,
which would be carried out from the sea.
This input was in conjunction with other inputs that Indian intelligence had
received from various other sources. For instance, Riyasuddin,
the son of Maulana Nasiruddin, who was under arrest for his alleged
involvement in the assassination of the then Gujarat home minister Naren
Pandya, had stated in his statements to the police that a sea-borne attack
was being planned by certain terrorist groups abroad for an attack on Mumbai.
Similarly other vague inputs had also come in from Uttar Pradesh as well as
other sources. But by September 24, Indian intelligence picked up several
specific inputs. These were:
- An LeT module was being trained in a camp around Karachi for launching
attacks from the sea for at least three months
- Yusuf Muzammil, the chief of operations of the LeT was in contact with
an LeT operative stationed in Bangladesh (identified as "Yayah") who
was being asked to procure international SIM cards for an operation
that had been planned
- Information was also available that the team had been trained by
Zakir-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, also known as "Chacha" an ageing
ideologue who conducted most of the LeT's training modules.
By the middle of November, as Indian intelligence continued to check out
further inputs, the pieces of an intricate jigsaw puzzle began to fall into
place. Sources say they learnt that the attack would come from the sea
and that the Taj Hotel would be a major target. However, it was not known
whether this attack would be carried out by planting bombs in the hotel or
by terrorists carrying small arms. Indian intelligence assessments were
tilting towards bombs being planted and security at the hotel was beefed up
accordingly to prevent terrorists from planting bombs inside the premises.
On November 18, R&AW passed on a specific advisory to the Coast Guard,
which serves as the Lead intelligence Agency for the coastal area. The
advisory asked the coast guard to intensify patrolling and look out for a
suspicious vessel, probably of Pakistani origin, which had sailed off from
Karachi. While the coast guard began to patrol the area with renewed
intensity, the terrorists had an entirely different plan.
According to details available with Indian intelligence and the information
given by the terrorist who was picked up by the Mumbai police in an
encounter near Chowpatty, the terrorists hijacked an Indian fishing boat,
the Kuber, somewhere near Pakistani waters. They beheaded the majority of
the boat's crew of six and only allowed one crew-member, Amarsinh Solanki,
to live so that he could help them with navigating the boat to Mumbai. The
coast guard found a Global Positioning System abandoned on the fishing
trawler that was drifting nearly four nautical miles off the coast of Mumbai
early on Thursday, November 27 morning, several hours after the
terrorist attack began. While the coast guard was looking for a Pakistani or
unidentified vessel, the Kuber (registration number 2303) blended in with
the thousands of registered Indian fishing vessels out at sea.
This enabled the terrorists to avoid detection and slip into Badhwar park in
Cuffe Parade in Mumbai before they began their operations. Most of them got
into waiting boats that had been arranged by Karachi-based underworld don
Dawood Ibrahim's diesel smuggling network in Mumbai. Arms, ammunition and
plastic explosives were quickly transferred to the waiting boats that took
the terrorists to the Gateway of India which was the pre-arranged launching
pad for the terrorist attack.
What has surprised investigators piecing together the details of the attack
is that the GPS recovered from the abandoned trawler, Kuber, had two maps
fed into it to aid navigation. One was a route from Karachi that was plotted
quite close to the Indian coast, while a return route had also been mapped
into the GPS from the Mumbai coast back to Karachi. "We think this was
done to give the terrorists some semblance of hope that they would go back
home after a successful raid," a top security official told
Outlook.
The fact that these two maps were fed into the GPS has confirmed that there
was some help from people with a naval or army background, and had extensive
knowledge of navigation at sea.
Arrested terrorist Azmal Amir Qasab
What security officials have also confirmed is the fact that most of the
terrorists were from Punjab in Pakistan. The arrested terrorist, Azmal Amir
Qasab, a resident of Chippalpura Taluka in Ukkad Zilla, Punjab, Pakistan has
told his interrogators that the terrorists had trained for over two months,
much of it on the Karachi coast for the naval leg. They were
trained in basic rudiments of conducting naval commando raids, given
extensive biefings on the layout of South Mumbai with adequate footage for
familiarity and CDs of alleged "atrocities" carried out against
Muslims in India. Qasab has also given details of how two of their
operatives checked into the Taj Hotel last Saturday, November 22, with
a lot of equipment. The duo received several visitors with huge bags,
apparently carrying RDX for the two IEDs which were defused by the Mumbai
police on the night of the first attack.
Meanwhile, investigators are poring through the call data details downloaded
from the satellite phone also recovered from the abandoned trawler. Many of
the call details have revealed numbers that have been traced back to the
LeT's chief of operations, Muzamil, as well as to Lakhvi. Interestingly, the
international SIM cards recovered from the bodies of the killed terrorists
correspond to the intelligence picked up earlier, when Muzamil had asked his
Bangladesh operative Yayah, to procure them. He apparently also procured the
fake Mauritian identity card recovered by the marine commandos.
Top security sources have also told Outlook that the intercepts
made by the intelligence agencies while the NSG commando assault was
underway clearly indicates that the terrorists were speaking to their
handlers in Pakistan. Among the instructions passed on to them during the
nearly 62-hour crisis were to throw grenades indiscriminately if they were
in danger of being overpowered and to start fake negotiations to prolong the
crisis. In fact, two such attempts at negotiations were made at Nariman
Bhawan and the Oberoi-Trident hotel to stave off an impending assault, even
though the terrorists had already killed the hostages.
In the days to come investigators will have to continue putting the pieces
of the puzzle together to create a more comprehensive picture of the attack.
Hidden among them will be key lessons on how to prevent similar attacks in
the future.