The attack and then the siege as Mumbai was in a dangerously deep and dark situation on 26 November 2008!
ANN DESK
It was the most ghastly evening which the Mumbaikars would remember forever since it was a stunner and that to an unexpected one in the evening when everything sat on a ticking time bomb!
-‘The flames are silent, peace is violent, tears are frozen, because massacre was chosen…… 26/11– Mumbai terror attack memories- Ankita Singhal’
-‘Mumbai is different! It’s busy, it’s dusty, it’s posh, it’s different from everything I’ve ever known. You can barely see the sky, hidden behind the tall buildings, the moon seems so detached, the trees look indifferent and distant.’ For those four days from 26th to 29th November 2008 everything looked detached as chaos, confusion and fear reigned supreme!
-‘ I picked up a book from Bhartiya Pustakalaya near the Jewel roundel and it had been titled by the authors Cathy Scott-Clark, Adrian Levy: The Siege as: The Attack on the Taj! This was way back in the year 2013. It was an extensively a very well researched book on the happenings as to what happened.’
-‘ Some action I would describe it frame wise manner as to what the scenario was…It was a routine day which started with Mumbai opening to a new day early in the morning on a sleepy note which was to change gears soon… the trains streamed into the cornucopia of railway stations starting from Virar to Mumbai Central and the Victoria terminal…..the skies thundered as the airliners continued to land and taxi at the legendary Santa Cruz…the people got busy in their day to day routine without having any idea as to what was going to happen in the evening…a terror attack had been planned and this only the plotters knew….some were passing the instructions and others were receiving them hearing them in Mumbai sitting somewhere which in military parlance we call as a safe house….though later on everything came to be known but at that moment no one knew….the warning bells had been sounded….. perhaps 26 different warnings had been issued by the R&AW, India’s external intelligence agency, saying that the Taj, the Oberoi Trident and the Leopold Cafe might be targeted…..needless to mention they were….the attack was on and it was when the sun decided to set and it was darkness….suddenly began the rattle of the bullets and bangs of the explosions…Mumbai and the people were on a hot tin roof as the mist of fear and scare was all over the place,,,, the same was to continue for four more days…..for the next 100 hours Mumbai was not the same place as it is or was at that time…..each passing second seemed to be an elongated one as if time was in no mood to rush on as it is at most of the times…..looked as if it had signed a standstill agreement with the prevailing circumstances’!
=’Coming back to the book….it opens with a description of the day-to-day life of the rich and wealthy people of Mumbai. Sabina Sehgal Saikia, a highly regarded food critic working for the Times of India is present….. A wedding reception is underway. Less than an hour after the start of the party, the attackers bypass security and make their way into the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. They immediately start shooting, and people hide under the dinner tables. The book is considerably more violent than other books in this category. The authors describe the militants as landlocked boys from impoverished rural communities, who knew only about chickens and goats. The book includes descriptions of how people were ambushed as they tried to escape, and of the days of violence that followed the initial attacks…..It was merciless mayhem at large…The Commercial capital of India had never seen such blood stained merciless show before….. and then finally the capture OF Ajmal Kasab and the telephonic conversation splattered everything apart as it became more clear that everything began from Pakistan, not that it was not known from the very beginning….! Many would have forgotten this tale of four day horror but there are most who remember every bit of it….. the terrorists had to be taken on and they were as the National Security Guards and MARCOS entered the fray…..but before that many valiant’s from Anti Terror Squad (ATS ) Mumbail Police, specialists in their own respects had taken on the terrorists…!
-‘The 2008 Mumbai attack was a series of terrorist attacks that took place in November 2008, when 10 members of Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist organization from Pakistan, carried out 12 coordinated shooting and bombing attacks lasting four days across Mumbai. Eight of the attacks occurred in South Mumbai: at Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, the Oberoi Trident, the Taj Palace & Tower,the Leopold Cafe, the Cama Hospital, the Nariman House, the Metro Cinema, and in a lane behind the Times of India building and St. Xavier’s College.
-‘Assistant Police Sub-Inspector Tukaram Omble, who succeeded in capturing a terrorist alive, with his bare hands. He was Kasab, Joint Commissioner of Police Hemant Karkare, the Chief of the Mumbai Anti-Terrorism Squad, Additional Commissioner of Police: Ashok Kamte, encounter specialist Senior Inspector Vijay Salaskar, Senior Inspector Shashank Shinde[,NSG Commando, Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan, NSG Commando, Hawaldar Gajender Singh Bisht, Three railway officials of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus were also killed….were the heroes of the 60 hours fight and went into the history of heroism of modern day India and left behind big tales of their heroic acts but there are many who love to relive the story and how India fought back!’
-‘It was the longest rescue operation in the nearly 25 years of existence of the National Security Guard, or NSG. Battling rather skewed odds, the commandos engaged highly trained terrorists entrenched in tactically superior positions. In a 51-hour battle to take back three key landmarks of Mumbai, they killed all eight and lost two of their own. This is a story of blood and tears!’
-‘On 29 November, India’s National Security Guards (NSG) conducted Operation Black Tornado to flush out the remaining attackers; it culminated in the death of the last remaining attackers at the Taj Hotel and ended the attacks. Only one of the 10 attackers, Ajmal Kasab, survived the attack. He was hanged in Yerwada jail in 2012. The other nine attackers killed during the onslaught were Hafiz Arshad alias Abdul Rehman Bada, Abdul Rahman Chhota, Javed alias Abu Ali, Fahadullah alias Abu Fahad, Ismail Khan alias Abu Ismail, Babar Imran alias Abu Akasha, Nasir alias Abu Umar, Nazir alias Abto Umer and Shoaib alias Abu Soheb.’
Excerpts of the NSG action:
‘All terrorists will eventually meet God. It’s our job to fix an appointment for them!’ The men from the Special Action Group and MARCOS ensured that in a spectacular way!
*It was half past midnight when Lt Colonel R.K. Sharma received a call asking him to report to the office pronto. Sharma, a Gurkha Rifles officer on deputation to the NSG’s 51st Special Action Group (SAG), knew what the call meant. Mumbai was under attack and this was a call to arms and in the next 30 minutes—the time allotted to the SAG to fully mobilise—he would be on the move. Like Sharma, scores of other officers were also receiving similar calls across the sprawling NSG complex in Manesar. The action was well and truly on and there was nothing to look back!
*The 51 SAG, specialists in building intervention operations, is a mixed lot of fighting men drawn from diverse arms of the Indian army. In command was Special Forces officer Colonel Sunil Sheoran, twice decorated for gallantry.
*The move was prompted by a meticulously executed attack. After coming in by sea and disembarking at two points along the Mumbai coast, the terrorists had broken up into five teams and headed out to their pre-planned targets. At 9.21 pm, two of them opened fire at the crowded Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) and 20 minutes later another team sprayed bullets at guests chilling out at the Leopold Cafe, killing 10.
*Navy’s elite Special Forces, the Marine Commandos (MARCOS) which had been called in from INS Abhimanyu, their base just off the coast of Mumbai. Forty-five members of MARCOS divided into two teams were also rushed in.
*The SAG quickly swung into action. Major Bharat Singh, a squadron commander, was asked to take in one team (25 men) into the Oberoi-Trident. A similar team led by Lt Col Sharma also went in. Both were under the tactical command of Col B.S. Rathee, deputy force commander of the SAG contingent.
* Not sure about where the terrorists were holed up, the commandos took the top-to-bottom approach for a dominating view and a better field of fire—critical in a close quarters battle. Armed with their German Heckler & Koch MP-5 submachine guns, the men began a room-by-room search of the Oberoi-Trident.
*Meanwhile, near the Gateway the NSG commandos took over operations in the new wing of the Taj from the MARCOS. The naval commandos had already evacuated 300 guests.Two teams were sent in, one under Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan and another under Major Kanwal.
*The SAG teams began to push the terrorists back through a connecting corridor to the Taj Palace while guests were moved out from all possible exits.
* Back at the Trident, the commandos combing the rooms made first contact with the terrorists on the 18th floor. There was a barrage of automatic gunfire..As the battle raged, the terrorists backed into a Room and kept up a steady fire to keep the SAG men at bay. Col B.S. Rathee slipped into the adjoining room under intense fire to set up a tactical command centre. At times the commandos would fire up their HHTIS (Hand Held Thermal Imagers) to locate the terrorists. It worked at times, and at times it didn’t.
*Col Sheoran, who had tactical command of the operations at the Taj hotel, was getting worried. While earlier estimates had indicated two terrorists, his men reported four. ‘Some of the terrorists were using a ladder between the restaurant on the top and a bar below to keep switching between floors. We homed in on their position and began to pin them down. Our prime concern was to keep all the trapped guests in one place so that we could evacuate them,’ an officer said . The commandos had to break down doors finger on the trigger, hoping to meet scared guests but ready for terrorists, just in case. The effort became tougher since the master electronic key to the hotel rooms was not functioning. ‘The shockwaves from the grenade blasts had rendered them useless so we just cracked the doors down.
‘The battle for the Taj continued to rage on. The terrorists were firing intermittently while playing a deadly game of hide and seek. Earlier in the operation, the SAG team suffered a major loss when Major Unnikrishnan, chasing a terrorist along with Havildar Yadav, came under fire. Yadav was hit and Sandeep immediately pulled him out, cautioned his colleagues to pull back and bounded up the stairs after the terrorists and engaged them in battle. He succumbed to their bullets.
*The final assault began early on November 29. Lobbing a few grenades, the SAG team rushed the room where the last terrorist was holing up for several hours. As the bullets hit him, he was pushed back against the window and he tumbled out and fell on the road below. Nearly 61 hours after the first shot had been fired by the terrorists, the operation was finally over and the commandos had won back the Taj hotel, inch by inch.
* These were just a few excerpts of the 61 hours fight in a building where the task was dual. It was to first rescue the hostages and then to get rid of the terrorists. Both were done with panache but the price was heavy! The battle had to be won and it was!
Those living in Mumbai still say and acknowledge that fate gives all of us three teachers, three friends, three enemies, and three great loves in our lives. But these twelve are always disguised, and we can never know which one is which until we’ve loved them, left them, or fought them. But for those four days things were totally different. The dream city had been stunned, numbed and paralyzed as terror had unleashed a torpedo that was on a devastation spree but when the Indian elite forces moved in everything changed for the better. Everything is back but the memories of those four days are haunting. This year it was the thirteenth time that they were and making the eyes of the Mumbaikars and Indians moist!
By: M S Nazki
