They came, they saw, they destroyed

The first documentation of the 26/11 Mumbai attack is a step-by-step account of how India’s financial capital became hostage to terror

Book: 26/11 Mumbai Attacked

Authors: Ashish Khetan, Bachi Karkaria, Chris Khetan, George Koshy, Harinder Baweja, Harsh Joshi, Julio Rebeiro and Rahul Shivshankar

Publisher: Roli Books

Price: Rs 295

Pages: 214

By Eisha Sarkar

Posted On Mumbai Mirror on Thursday, June 25, 2009 at 12:44:48 PM

The monstrosity of the attacks now known numerically as 26/11 unravels through the pages of the book, 26/11 Mumbai Attacked. You know the facts well, having had to go through them repeatedly for months in newspapers and on 24x7 news channels. But there's a lot that happened that was left unreported because of lack of precious newsprint space and bulletin time. The book provides a step-by-step account of how a 10-member fidayeen squad sneaked into India via the sea and killed innocents at CST, Leopold Cafe, Taj Mahal Hotel, Trident-Oberoi Hotel and Nariman House aka Chabad House.

It starts with a tribute to four brave men - Joint Commissioner (ATS) Hemant Karkare, Additional Commissioner Ashok Kamte, Assistant Sub-Inspector Tukaram Omble and Constable Jaywant Patil - who died that night fighting the enemies of the State. Through accounts of their wives, compiled by Chris Khetan, you get a glimpse of them without their uniforms - loving fathers and husbands who strived to fulfill all their duties, to their families and to the nation.

It then goes on to describe the fight for Nariman House, the carnage at CST, the dark hours at Hotel Taj and Hotel Oberoi and eyewitness accounts from CST, Leopold Cafe, Taj and Oberoi Hotels. The transcript of Ajmal Amir Kasab's (the lone surviving terrorist) interrogation outlines how the terrorists sailed from Karachi to Mumbai. These were just a handful of youngsters picked up from a madrassa and given AK-47s and grenades. These were trained personnel, who knew the use of GPS, satellite phones, marine navigation and military combat. They communicated with unidentified handlers, who would give them details of positions of military and police personnel and the line of attack or defense they should undertake, of how they could use hostages as human shields in encounters.

The transcripts of the phone conversations show that the terrorists depended a lot on their handlers. In one transcript, the handler tells a terrorist to, "Now you push out the gun barrel and fire once or twice in the lane outside. Don't expose your body, only the barrel; there's an open lane below - fire there." They even had to 'write down' information that the handlers wanted to convey to the Indian government via the media.

One of the most interesting chapters in the book is Inside the Headquarters of Lashkar-e-Toiba by Harinder Baweja. Baweja is the only Indian journalist to have been allowed to visit Jamaat-ud-Dawa in Muridke, Pakistan, where Kasab received training for the attack. It looks like any other charitable institution with hospitals, administrative buildings, madrassas and schools, but Lashkar-e-Toiba’s representative Abdullah Muntazir doesn't delve into education. Instead he talks about how "Kashmir is the battlefield for Jehad and how the Indian occupation of Kashmir is similar to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan".

The post-mortem analysis by retired IPS officer and activist Julio Rebeiro abstains from pointing fingers at just the police force’s lack of preparedness. Instead, he says it's the lack of coordination between various security agencies (IB, RAW, Armed Forces, State Police, NSG, etc) that makes India a soft target for terrorist attacks. Information gathering and sharing is the most crucial step to prevent such attacks. Unfortunately, it was found lacking in November 2008.

The book is the first documentation of the 26/11 attacks. It's significant because it paves the way for more such analytical and research works that can build a repository of information for future reference, much the way books on the 9/11 attacks on the US are. "The idea is not to be morose but to tell people to be more vigilant, more protective and sensitive to each other," Chris Khetan is quoted in a newspaper report.

It's the spirit of Mumbai that Bachi Karkaria writes about that saw the city through this disaster, but how many more attacks and onslaughts will Mumbaikars have to take before they fall and the government wakes up, is still to be seen.