Recalling 26/11 Mumbai Attack, the Kargil of India’s Internal Security | S3 | Ep 31 - In Our Defence

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is India Today Podcasts.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Welcome to Season three of Another Defense, the podcast that
takes you inside the world of conflict. I'm your host,
Deve Goswami, and every week I sit down with experts
and attacked officers from the Army, Navy and Air Force
to decode all things to do with India security and
explore what it truly means to serve. Get ready for

(00:27):
stories of strategy, sacrifice and strength.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
This is in Our Defense.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
It's been seventeen years since ten terrorists from Pakistan launched
what I would describe as a special forces operation like
raid on Mumbai and attack, a terror attack that lasted
three days, took the lives of more than one seventy people,
an attack that is deeply personal for somebody like me
who's grown up in that city, some somebody like my

(00:56):
guest Sandy Punathan, who's also grown up in the city.
It's a night many remember. It's a night that many
people who were maybe in their early childhood, would have
just heard about, would have seen photos of, would have
seen headlines off, but may not always know what exactly
went down during those three days. The attacks are well known.

(01:17):
The attacks have been dissected at Nauseum. I don't want
this episode to focus on just the feelings, because that's
been like I said, talked about at Nauseum Yea, the
feelings of the media, for example, providing life coverage that
afforded the handlers back in Pakistan the opportunity to watch
the attacks in real time, call that the territors up
on satellite phones and direct them to particular rooms you know,

(01:38):
coming in oh mahaja, stuff like that.

Speaker 3 (01:40):
The first time it had happened in any terror attack.
I mean, never did we have this thing of handlers
sitting a thousand kilometers away and literally steering the terrorists,
you know, to go to rooms, buildings, what to do,
what tactical positions to take, how to counter commandos that
are entering a room. I mean literally they were guiding

(02:00):
them by the minute first time.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
Yeah, So that was something that's made headline since the
other things that I've made headlines are the poorly equiped
mumby police, poorly trained by police. Rather, there is something
that you've talked about in the previous episode that the
equipment was fine, it was just badly maintained, yes, and
they did not have the requisite training on the equipment
that they had, the issue of the initial coordination, the
logistics of the energy reaching late, and stuff like that

(02:24):
that's also made headlines. What has also made headlines is
the sure bravery.

Speaker 1 (02:28):
Of the Nergy troops they lost.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
I think, if I'm not wrong, two personnel in that
use attacks Major San the Punicrash and gaging saying at
different locations, and the Punicrashi at the Tajan.

Speaker 1 (02:38):
Haulda saying at the chabadouse.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
All that has made headlines, and all that is something
I'm pretty sure our listeners and viewers know of, But
I'll focus this episode instead on some lesson aspects that
I know of thanks to your book. You wrote the
book in twenty fourteen Late Operation Back to NATO that
recounts those three days from the perspective of the of
the first response, whether it was a Marcos, the NSGS

(03:02):
and stuff like that. And I'll straight away start with
something that we discussed last week, actually is the is
that how flawed the popular perception that these were just
some rat tag bunch of you know, teenagers sent from
Pakistan who just like we're wearing you know, T shirts
and pajamas, carrying at forty sevens. But if you read,
if if anyone reads your book, I was struck by

(03:25):
the way they operated. There is a part in your
book where you talk about they first of for a
bread and body pair, something that you see only in
the infantry. So both there were two of them together
at all at all places, and the two of them
always kept a distance of around six feet from each other,
possibly to avoid you know, firing at each other by mistake.
The magazines that they had, of they gave forty seven

(03:47):
were taped together with duct tape that allowed for them
to quickly reload instead of you know, taking off a magazine,
reaching out into a pocket and loading one another. That's
like crucial one two seconds extra right.

Speaker 4 (03:57):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (03:57):
And the one thing that struck me in your book
is that they had this ability to fire an AK
forty seven with one single hand from their hip and
simultaneously threw a grainade from another handy. Tell us about
this training that these guys had, you.

Speaker 3 (04:12):
Know, they have good question. And it was actually a
Marine commando officer that I was speaking to who actually
told me that these guys were trained by people like us.
And I said, why this is because you study the
whole pattern of the attack. You have ten guys two
buddy uh you know, five buddy pairs on one rubber
boat who launched from a coast. You know, a clandestine raid.

(04:38):
They launch off another craft, which can be a submarine.
In this case it was a fishing trawler. They sail
to the shore. There's a motor on their OBM. There's
an OBM on their rubber boat. They come, they hit
the coast, they ditched the boat.

Speaker 4 (04:56):
They split into five pairs.

Speaker 3 (04:58):
And if this was, for instance, an airfield near the sea,
they would jog to the target. They would split into five.
One body pair would go after the sentries. Another buddy
pair would break in through the fence and go after
the parked aircraft. Another would go after the soldiers. Another
would go after the you know, the whatever arms, ammunition,

(05:19):
fuel storage sites. So this is exactly how a marine
commando raid is planned. Now why marine come out of
any naval special forces radars like that, It's very simple.
These are all the elements of that. And then they
they first infiltrate the coast, the enemy coast, and then
they expultrate, they sit, they come back to the boat,
and then they go out back to sea and they're

(05:41):
you know, picked up again by the submarine, by the
air you know, aircraft or mother ship in this case,
except for the ex filtration part. They got rid of
the ex filtration part. They said, all these ten guys
have to fight to their deaths. And of course there
was another thing where they had all ID cards with
you know, Indian names, that was part of the deception

(06:02):
plan as well. So it was exactly he says, this
is the kind of operations that we do. And this
is very clearly someone with on the opposite side, naval
special forces who have put these guys together.

Speaker 4 (06:15):
And they've given this.

Speaker 3 (06:16):
The only thing is that instead of attacking a military target,
they have proceeded to attack a series of civilian targets
in a five kilometer by five kilometer box roughly less
than twenty five square kilometers.

Speaker 4 (06:31):
All these targets that you've.

Speaker 3 (06:32):
Mentioned, you know, whether it's the VT station or incidentally,
VT was supposed to be the fifth siege. Those two
terrists lost their way. It was VT station, it was
broy it was charge hotel, Cabard house, all of those things,
and it was meant to these guys were meant to
fight for three, four, five days and die fighting before
their bodies would be found. So this is exactly that.

(06:54):
And if you look at the pattern of the way
these guys moved, like you mentioned the other big waves,
the have a sack. And I met one of the
Navy seals. He was a defense attach here at the
US embassy. He was a I saw his, you know,
Navy seal badge, and I started talking to him at
a party.

Speaker 4 (07:14):
And I asked him that, you know, I've.

Speaker 3 (07:16):
Read about the Navy seals, the technique that you carry
or have a sacks. They sometimes they don't carry at
the back, they carry it in the front. So he said, yeah,
it's very simple. You carry it in the front because
you leave your firing hand free right your right hand.
And also if you want to drop very quickly and
you want to take cover, you use the bag as

(07:37):
a kind of a small sand bag, so you drop immediately.
See if you're carrying a heavy have a sack on
your back, what happens is here your back straightens up.
It's not easy for you to take positions and to
crouch and move, you know, So that kind of thing.
So this is like little things like that. If you
see Kasab, for instance, in some of those sequences you
see the have a sack in front when he's firing,

(07:58):
for instance, because his hand is free, right, his shooting
hand which is holding the ak is free. So little
things like this suggests that these guys got Special Forces training,
you know, wherever they were. And then you know, it
all started making sense because there were all those Intel alerts,
the twenty six Intel alerts that came which said that
LED had been training in Mangala Dam. Right now, at

(08:23):
that point it didn't make sense. But then later when
I was looking through the evidence again, I said, Mangala
Dam is where SSG trains Special Services Group, which is
the Pakistani Special Forces. They train in Mangaladam. Okay, right,
So it is quite likely that these were the guys.
The trainers were SSG. Either it was MUSA company which
is the counter terrorist outfit, or it was SSG Navy

(08:47):
n which are the Marine commando equivalent over there. But
very clearly these guys were being trained in Mangaladam. And
if you are trained in Mangaladim, it's very clear that
there is an SST because SSG trains in about three
or four areas and Pakist right cheratters.

Speaker 4 (09:02):
Of course their.

Speaker 3 (09:02):
Headquarters Mangola is one place. There is another time I
forget which in Kyber paktun Kua where they also train
Karachi of course on the seafront. But to train in
places like this is clear indication of the fact that
these were trained. They were trained by special forces. And
you'd look at the way they they walk, the way
they move, like you mentioned the separation between these two

(09:23):
body pairs, that one guy is always in front, the
other guys walking behind him, you know, covering his basically,
as they say, in covering his six So if you
see the pattern of their movement also, and the way
there are some CCTV footage also which shows the way
these guys you know, split and they take cover like
that very rapidly too. And they were like, I mean,

(09:45):
the Marcos that battled them, they said, these guys were
literally our counterparts. The way they were moving and they
were taking cover and shooting, and you know, all these
are giveaways, you know, and you can see it from that,
not just the CCTV thing. You see the way they
were built, and they were all heavily trained three four
five months possibly more, only for that one mission, right,

(10:06):
their whole training was just for twenty six eleven because
that was it. It was the end of it. They're
one and only mission and they had to be better
than whoever they would come up with against, whether it's
the Mumbai Police. Of course, the Mumbay Police is not
trained for military assaults like this. This was a military
commando assault. It was a deep state operation. It was

(10:27):
the Pakistan Army, that was the ISI, and the SSG Navy.
It was a combination of many state actors who came
together to make this happen. The Pakistan Navy was also
involved because and this is all I'm not making this
stuff up. It's all in David Headley's what he told
our introgators, the NI. He said, well, you know, there

(10:50):
were these frogmen who came and he said that they
would come here and they would study the plans. And
you're wondering that, what's the Park Navy aug man doing
in Musafarabad, which is like a thousand kilometers away from
the sea, Because he's there to study the landing sites.
And he's over there and he's telling them which is

(11:10):
the ideal time of the year to do the attack.
It had to be done in November because that's winter
seas are calm. You can hijack a fishing trawler go
all the way there. And then you had heady on
the ground who was giving you the other side of things.
Where what is the ideal place to land by the
war park?

Speaker 4 (11:27):
Right?

Speaker 3 (11:27):
You have a small jetty here done the reki, that's right.
And so this whole thing was a commando operation. And
we all know who the most powerful man in Pakistan
at that time was, so commando general.

Speaker 2 (11:41):
So it fits exactly why I called it a special
forces type rate because the only difference is, like you said,
the targets were civilian. These men were not enlisted in
the Pakistan military. Rather they were from the Arm of
the Pakistan.

Speaker 4 (11:55):
Yes, paramilitary.

Speaker 3 (11:57):
And you know one other thing there is that this
is what colonel told me. He was the commanding officer
of the grenadiers unit that was in collab that that
was coldon but it was called to do a cordon. Yeah,
and these guys were battle hardened soldiers. They're just de
inducted from Kashmi. They should have been pushed into handle
the crisis. But he remember him telling me this. When

(12:19):
I heard the Aka rounds, you know, the bursts They
were not random terror file like you would imagine gangsters
firing a you know, the spray and pray kind of
thing that you've seen in movies.

Speaker 4 (12:28):
These were controlled bursts. Tuck tuck, tuck tuck. They were
fighting like that double tap. Yeah, you know, it's like
tuk tuk tuk, tuk tuk tuck.

Speaker 3 (12:36):
These were guys who knew their stuff, and then you
had to they had to conserve ai, you know, so.

Speaker 4 (12:40):
Stuff like that.

Speaker 3 (12:41):
I knew that whoever's shooting is there is a lot
of training that's gone into making this guy shoot that way.

Speaker 1 (12:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:49):
In fact, one of the the lasting talking points of
the Charch siege is that the reason one of the
reasons it took so long, one of course, was that
that was sure big hotel for their energy, clear, but
also the fact that the last stand happened.

Speaker 1 (13:03):
Across two floors. I think it was the ground in
the first.

Speaker 2 (13:06):
And the location where it happened, if I'm not going
it was. It was a bar on the lower floor
and something else on the upper harbour bar the harbour,
and there was a spiral staircase that linked the two,
and the terrorists over there managed to keep going up
and down, up and up and down, making it seem
to end to the energy that they were like five
six seven people over there, except it was just two
people who knew how to just you know, go down,

(13:27):
shoot from there, go shoot from there.

Speaker 3 (13:28):
So this is the crucial mistake that happened. And you know, firstly,
you have to understand that the attacks happened. It started
on the night of the twenty sixth of November, about
nine thirty is when the first shots were fired, nine
thirty nine to forty and the last shots were fired
on Saturday morning.

Speaker 4 (13:46):
That's the twenty ninth years.

Speaker 3 (13:49):
And the energy actually arrived there only on and this
is all popular. Everyone knows what happened. There were delays
the energy. By the time they took off, it was
past midnight. They landed and they got there. The thing,
it was early morning on the twenty seventh. It was
twenty seventh of November, so the energy was literally on
the ground for just about over over two days. Twenty seventh,
twenty eighth, and twenty ninth is when they kind of

(14:12):
finally the last siege of the Tarj, the harbor bar
that you mentioned that was cleared. Now, the big mistake
that was made over here is that none of the
special forces that were deployed the first responders. Incidentally, and
this is where credit must be given to the Marine commandos.

Speaker 4 (14:29):
Absolutely heroic intervention.

Speaker 3 (14:31):
By the Marcos who just they were pushed into a
smoke filled hotel and they were set. The terrorists are
year somewhere, you know, and they came in and their
intervention actually directly saved the lives of over one hundred
and firfty hotel guests at the chambers of the Tarj Mail.
And this is all i'man the spectacular action. But for

(14:51):
the Marine commandos who intervened, they saved the lives of
one hundred and fifty hotel guests. I know it's seventeen
years must be set because I believe they haven't got
enough credit for what they did that night. They saved
a lot of high profile hotel guess members of parliament.
They were about half a dozen members of parliament to
were hiding in the chambers. They were government officials, they

(15:15):
were as officers who were hiding there, you know, And
the Marcos intervened. That was the only intervention that night.
Only armed in response that the terrorists got the four
of them ran away the Marcos, you know, basically sanitized
the area, opened the doors, let the hostages out. And
this happened in the late early morning of twenty seventh November.

(15:36):
That's what three four ams when the Marcos arrived. So
I mean that that was a spectacular. So the big
mistake I was coming to is the fact that they
should have been allowed to continue that thing. The army
should have moved in instead of waiting for the energy.
And I know this is with the wisdom of hindsight
at that time. You know, the decisions that are taken

(15:58):
on the ground there. I wouldn't want to be the
commander on the ground who had to take that decision,
except there was no one in charge over there on
the ground. Multiple agencies they were coming in and now
floating in and out and all that.

Speaker 4 (16:11):
So just chaos. But I think we've learned our lessons
ever since.

Speaker 1 (16:15):
Right, I did actually want to come to the Marcos.

Speaker 2 (16:18):
And that was the other aspect of twenty six eleven
I want to talk about in this episode, like when
we when we say that you want to discuss the
lesson known aspects of twenty six eleven, so I.

Speaker 1 (16:28):
Can call it a So I already have this book
of yours.

Speaker 2 (16:31):
I've read it back then, but obviously I wanted to
read again to prepare for this episode, and you were
kind enough to give me another edition. Coincidence is this
that there already is a dedication in the book written
pen written dedication to somebody whom you had given the book,
which is where this question now comes from.

Speaker 4 (16:46):
Right.

Speaker 2 (16:47):
The dedication is to dear Captain. I think it was
the current we're talking about, all right, Yeah, so it's
dear captain. The Indian Navy's finest r at C was
nineteen seventy one. It's fine are ashore was twenty six eleven,
thanks to lieutenants. So I want you to take it

(17:08):
from there and tell us why do you think this
was the Navy's finest are ashore. You've described it in
the book briefly. You've talked about how that that was
the first call mail because that was the closest set
of special forces you had.

Speaker 1 (17:22):
There was a if I'm not wrong.

Speaker 2 (17:24):
A private boat that was sent to sort of ferry
them from their headquarters just.

Speaker 1 (17:27):
Off the coastal moment was a harbor utility here after
and they turn them.

Speaker 2 (17:32):
So explain what you said in the dedication, and also
why because while reading it I could kind of sense
how did these guys manage to make sense of the
fog of war because they were actually faced with the
fog of four The energy, by the way, was prepping
on the way on the planes, they had the charts,
They knew almost how terrorist where they were, so they
had all the time in the world to make their plans.

Speaker 1 (17:55):
I'm not belittling their action. By the way, these.

Speaker 2 (17:57):
Guys had no clue, like you said, they were just
like eight of them by their first back eight people
marine Commando's thrust to taj Mahal.

Speaker 3 (18:05):
Right, so you know interesting story they've The story behind
that is that you have Johnny Joseph, the Chief Secretary
of uh Marashtra, and he was there the crisis room
of the Mantraale and he was a bureaucrat who had
been under a lot of criticism for not acting when
the city floods hit Mumbai a few years prior, and

(18:28):
he was determined that, look, I'm not going to get
this thing again. He was BMC Commissioner i believe at
the time when the floods happened, and he started dialing
a whole lot of people saying, listen, we've we're under attack.
Because the police were clearly telling him, so this is
a military kind of attack. We need the armed forces
to respond. And he started calling all the military people
on his phone and he first called the Marashra and

(18:50):
Gujarat area the General Huda, Major General Huda was there
in charge, and he called him and he said, I
need commando. So somebody in the government, obviously, Massa told look,
you need commandos. Only commandos can fight this kind of
a assault because they saw the way they were moving.
They were running and they were you know, firing and
moving and all of that. So he started asking the

(19:11):
armed forces for commando. He asked the army, where are
your commandos? So he said, I have nothing here. All
my commandos are sitting in you know, in Pune is
the closest that we have. We have an army unit there,
but those are not under me, those under the Southern
Army commanders. You have to ask for that. So he
a requisition that. Then he called the navy. Now this
is the interesting thing. There was a naval officer. There

(19:33):
was an Admiral Murlei theren who was the flag off
Samarasha area there and and now both of them were
Malali's so they had that bond. So he called him
and he said that Mule, I need commandos. Do you
have any commandos? He said, yeah, We've got the marine
commandos just across. So he says, you know, you just
do the bureaucratic things, send us the requisition, we'll send
the Marcos immediately. So that's how the Marcos came into

(19:55):
the scene. And that's because I mean, I joke about
this that two government officials that my spoke the same language.

Speaker 4 (20:02):
And so the Marcos arrived.

Speaker 3 (20:04):
But you know, there wasn't a very clear appreciation of
how many people the Tarje had been attacked, how many terrorists,
what is a force? So they literally grabbed whatever they
had in their you know. So the lucky thing is
that this is another story which I must tell you subsequently,
that how did the Marcos start getting deployed in jane Kan, Kashmir.

(20:27):
So the Marcos who actually deployed there were wearing the
what I call the Indian palm front camouflage, which is
what the Indian Army used to wear in the eighties,
and I think by the late two thousands they had
already started switching over, so marcos were actually wearing Indian
Army fatigues with their black BP jackets on top. So
a lot of people who saw their early arrival, they

(20:50):
thought that they were Army special forces right now they
had this unit. There were two, three, Some of the
officers that you mentioned, they're all in service. By the way,
some of these officers had just deinducted from Jammun, Kashmir.
The Marine Commando. There is a permanent presence of the
Marine Commandos in Kashmir the ruler. So it's interesting how
that came. But I'll just tell you about that in

(21:11):
a minute. But the minute they landed there, they got
hold of a hotel security officer who told them, look,
this is the layout. We don't have a map or anything,
but I can show you around. And he actually directed them.
So Neil coudiad yes, brave guy, and he showed them
this is the where they are, this is where they're
possibly gone in.

Speaker 4 (21:31):
Uh, this is the chambers. You know, all the guests
are here.

Speaker 3 (21:34):
And that is when they entered the chambers, there was
a firefight. One commando was struck, the others kind of
you know, surrounded that place. And when they went in
they discovered that they had been there was a kitchen exit,
which they hadn't been told about. So they thought that
they had got them all, you know, bottled in into

(21:55):
the chambers and it would have ended the siege right there.
And in fact, they threw in a couple of grenades.
And this is the tragic part.

Speaker 4 (22:03):
You know, equipment really matters.

Speaker 3 (22:06):
And one of the Marcos who was there in that
rate said that, you know, we pulled all our grenades
and we chucked it inside because we were clear there
was no hostages in that place that the terrorists were in.
They threw a couple of grenades in there. Nothing exploded,
and when they recovered these things, they discovered that, you know,
it was junk kind of grenades. The fuses were defective,

(22:30):
and these were those notorious H thirty six grenades that
made by the Ordnance Factory, which literally, I mean, that's
a running joke through the book that those grenades never
exploded when you tossed them. So, you know, this is
one of those little lacuna in equipment, especially infantry equipment,
that we've paid a very heavy price for. It is

(22:50):
a well known fact that the terrorists and the Park
Army by extension, I mean the Terrists are an extension
of the Park Army used better grenades than us, the
argiest eighty six Austrian made grenades. And here we are,
you know, manufacturing a Second World War grenade and the
quality is so poor that you throw it it doesn't explode.

(23:11):
So one of the Marcos officers was telling me that,
you know, if he had those grenades had gone off,
that would have been the end of the third siege
right there. All those terlorers would have died, the four
of them. Wow, And you know, that would have been
the end of it. And because they wasn't and they
didn't know that there was another route, escape route that's
siege produg So then they had the option whether to

(23:32):
run after these the small there were two to three prahs,
so Praha is typically eight Marcos. So there were but
three Prahas fetched up. They were two first and then
a third one landed up a small unit. They either
had the they could either focus on, you know, rescuing
all the yes who was you know, barricaded in the chambers,

(23:52):
or they could have run after the terrorists. They chose
to rescue the hostage priority is always the civilians. Priority
is the hostages.

Speaker 4 (23:59):
Terri. Wait, you need to get the people out safely.
So they focused on that.

Speaker 3 (24:03):
They took those one hundred and fifty and seventy hostages,
well potential hostages out and you know, here's something that
their lives were actually put at risk by the that
very very you know, thoughtless broadcast of the positions.

Speaker 4 (24:22):
Of those hotel guests.

Speaker 3 (24:25):
It's it's a very famous thing and it's you know,
it's been written and discussed ad naseum.

Speaker 4 (24:30):
About how you had members of our.

Speaker 3 (24:34):
Fraternity, the journalists who literally called up these hotel guests
who were there, and they were broadcasting interviews and broadcasting
their positions live, and you had handlers were saying, go
to this place, they are right there, to the terrorists
are and another part of the charge hotel, and they're
redirected to come here to the chambers and go and

(24:54):
grab these potential VIP hostages. And it's just then that
again another thoughtless action where one of the people disregards
the police advice to stay indoors in the chambers. They said,
they just lock yourself, let the marcos, let the commandos come,
don't open the doors. This man, it was a chef,

(25:15):
very celebrity chef, led this one man operation, opened the
doors and he let the people out, and that's just
when the first terrorists games saw them and they just
opened fire. And there's a they're terrible visuals, I mean,
it's too golory to share. Where they're literally rows of
these guests, chefs and all that lying in, you know,

(25:36):
one after the other. It'd been mercilessly gunned down. And
that gives you an idea of what awaited the one
hundred and fifty odd guests in the chambers, you know,
that night, what would have happened to them if the
Marcos hadn't arrived there.

Speaker 4 (25:48):
So that was the thing.

Speaker 3 (25:49):
And they such a small unit, just sixteen of them,
growing up to about twenty four. So these three units
actually did the best that night. There was another unit
that went to the Oberoi, but they couldn't do much.
They just stayed at the bottom of the stage. They didn't,
you know, really do any intervention and all that. But
here here's the thing that how did the Marcos start

(26:11):
getting deployed to Kashmir. That's a that's a very interesting
side story, and I kind of solved that thing. In
I was in going a seminar just last year and
I was talking to somebody there. We were talking about,
you know, Black Tornado Marcos operations. There were the Marcos
officer there. We were talking about the history of the Marcos.
I asked him that how did the Marcos start going

(26:32):
to Kashmir?

Speaker 4 (26:33):
Which year was it?

Speaker 3 (26:35):
So they said, uh, I think ninety five, mid nineties,
ninety five ninety six. So the chief is right here.
And the Chief happened to be there in the same
room with us, Admiral Chikavat. So I said, so were
you the chief and the Marcos were deployed. He says, yes,
you want to hear the story of how that happened.
So I said, yeah, of course. So he said, you know,
one day I got a call from Bippin and the

(26:55):
Bippin Joshi so and he said, you know, check, how
do you have any Marine commandos you can spare? He said, yeah, Why,
we've got a problem in the Wooler Lake because we're
fighting you know, ciops and we're finding a lot of
these militants are getting in through infiltrating through the Wooler Lake. Yes, right,
so can you can you send some marcos there to

(27:16):
kind of stop their exfiltration routes and you know, infiltration routes.
He said, sure, We've got a unit. We'd be happy
to send them. So that is how the marcos started
going to Ruler interest to Kashmir. And I always say that,
you know, sometimes those singular decisions that are taken have
such downstream effects. I who would have thought at that time?

(27:37):
Would Admiral Chicawath have known? And I asked him this,
did you know that because of that one decision you
had a core of highly trained marine commandos. They are
the best commandos in the country. There's no doubt about that.
They are trained to operate in three dimensions, right. Did
you know that they would do something like this on land?
You know, like you've seen in seventy one they the

(28:00):
kind of devastation they wrought on.

Speaker 4 (28:02):
The park Navy. Did you think that they would do
this on land?

Speaker 3 (28:05):
You know?

Speaker 4 (28:05):
Because of this is no. I had no idea.

Speaker 3 (28:07):
It was just one of those decisions we took in
the goodness of things and because we felt it was
the right thing to do. And uh lo and behold,
you've you got the uh the the reward for that
investment you made in a decade where you had Marcos
who entered the charj and you knew immediately what was on.
They knew of a Diane attack. They saw the bag

(28:29):
and they said, oh, there's a FI attack very quickly
and that if you've seen those pictures diministion, they recovered these.
So the Marcos, who the officers I spoke with, they said,
we had no doubt in our minds this was a
Din attack, you know, the minute we heard the TV
reports and all that. So that's why it's really important.
You know, battle inoculation deployments like this you learn a

(28:51):
lot and that's how special forces function.

Speaker 1 (28:54):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (28:54):
You see anywhere in the world, even if there's a
small you know, uh, hostage stand off or something like that,
somebody is holding a hostage with a knife, the Special
Forces guys run the immediately because for them it's a
live situation. They want to understand what happened, you know.
And I see this also in you know, when I
was covering the Dante Vada massacre, for instance, I had

(29:16):
three Special Forces friends of mine call me because I
was there on the ground. They said, tell us what
happened exactly. We want to understand this because for us
it's really important. You know, if you come up against
ambush like this, how do you protect plan for it
this that so contingency planning is really important. So that
that's what the sole episode kind of demonstrated to me
that it was.

Speaker 4 (29:36):
Actually, this whole thing is a special Forces if you
get it.

Speaker 3 (29:39):
Whether it was the training on the other side, whether
it was our response on this side, it's always special force.
But at the same time, I maintained that you need
to train the first responders, which is the police, police,
the policeman on the ground, the beat constable. He needs
to know what to do. He needs to be able
to respond very quickly. If not the beat constable, then

(30:03):
you know, a small SWAT unit in a police station.
You don't need a lot of people. An attack like
this can be handled by about five or six people
the first responders. As first responders, you basically pin the
guys down. You don't allow to run all around the
place like those two that is from CSD.

Speaker 2 (30:22):
Yeah, because in fact, the majority of the casualties took
place in the initial part of the attack. A third
of them actually happened at CSDCSD was that I think
near about sixty people, fifty six people.

Speaker 3 (30:34):
Yeah, it was very tragic. So the lesson there is
and you know, you saw that in a queue of
police swart units, special forces units who came and studied
the Mumbai operations, and some of them made some very
interesting observations. I remember one of the was it the
NYPD Swort team guy who said that looking at the
pattern of the firing on the walls, you could tell

(30:57):
again that they were experts.

Speaker 4 (30:58):
You know, the way they were.

Speaker 3 (31:00):
Firing the bullets, the you know, stay, double tap, the space,
all of those things, you know, so little things like that.

Speaker 4 (31:06):
They came.

Speaker 3 (31:06):
They wanted to study this, and you know why I
wrote the book It was it was a thrilling.

Speaker 4 (31:14):
Story to write and the fact that how we responded,
you know.

Speaker 3 (31:17):
The people, you know, civilians, all three forces came together
to fight this terror attack. The first of its kind
was that I saw this as a template for future operations.
And my last line in the book is actually I said, look,
I wrote this in twenty fourteen. I said, everybody in

(31:37):
the world needs to study these kind of operations because
how easily they can be replicable in other cities, you know,
and I said, look at a time, and like you know,
groups like ISIS are becoming powerful. They've started to capture territory.
Exactly what they will do, and this is what happened.
You You saw ISIS attack Paris in twenty fifteen. You
saw Al Shabab attack the Vestigate Mall in Kenya in seventeen.

(32:01):
It's a blueprint for inflicting for a small body of men,
highly trained, motivated men to carry out you know, a
massive terror attack on a city paralyzed an entire city.
And it's also, you know, if you look at it,
a confluence of so many things.

Speaker 4 (32:18):
It was.

Speaker 3 (32:19):
You had television, of course, you had four seven news,
you had social media just.

Speaker 4 (32:24):
Beginning to emerge.

Speaker 3 (32:25):
And attacks like this because they happen in places high
visibility things. Landmarks are targeted, civilians are targeted. There are images,
you know, when we play out those images, that adds
to the horror of the act itself. So I'm sure
a terror attack, for instance, I'm just saying Mumbai has

(32:46):
had two attacks, right, nineteen ninety three and twenty six eleven,
two thousand and eight, fifteen years apart.

Speaker 4 (32:54):
If you look at the death toll.

Speaker 3 (32:56):
If you ask anybody which was the most horrific terror attack,
everyone say it's twenty six eleven, right, But if you
look at the sheared numbers of people who died and
the way they died, it is the nineteen ninety three
bomb blasts. Only two hundred and sixty people died in that.
It's like one hundred people more than nine twenty six eleven.
And they died in massive blasts. I mean you had

(33:18):
literally buildings vaporizing, you know, BSD, buses going up in smoke,
that kind of thing they use RDX to attack. So
it all happens. Now, ninety three happened at a time
when there was no social media where you had to
wait for the next day's newspapers to know what happened,
or maybe that evening one bulletin on a government channel

(33:39):
which would tell you exactly what they want you to hear.
So now in an you know of mass media, social media,
all of these things, even a small attack makes very big.

Speaker 4 (33:49):
Waves, like we've seen in the right FOT attack.

Speaker 2 (33:52):
Yes true, yeah, I mean this was the typical case
of you know, it terrorized people.

Speaker 1 (33:57):
Was what terror attacks are meant. Clue, it is of course.

Speaker 2 (33:59):
It is about causing It is about violence, causing mayhem.
But I think when these attacks are launched, the idea
is not as much to kill people. It's more to
leave an imprint on the 're targeting on the psyche
basic right, we'll talk more about the.

Speaker 1 (34:15):
Twenty six eleven and the lesser known aspects of it,
but for.

Speaker 5 (34:17):
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This month, Health Wealth will be doing a special podcast

(34:40):
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Speaker 1 (35:07):
Welcome back. Suddenly, before the breaker, we were talking about.

Speaker 2 (35:10):
The Marine Commandos Marcos and you know, actually I think
twenty six eleven was one of those.

Speaker 1 (35:16):
It was the moment when a lot.

Speaker 2 (35:17):
Of people in India became aware of the existence of
a unit called the Marine Commandos.

Speaker 1 (35:23):
The Marcos. I was one of them.

Speaker 2 (35:25):
By the way, and I have this very vivid memory,
and somehow I cannot find any.

Speaker 1 (35:30):
Photo or video of it now.

Speaker 2 (35:33):
But the Marcos actually held a press conference outside TARJ
on the first night. Their faces were covered, they were wearing,
you know, sunglasses, but they held a press conference. And
I have that memory, I can't I can't get that
press conference anywhere, by the way. I tried searching for it.
But you had a nice reaction to it, right now,
what was that?

Speaker 3 (35:52):
Oh, exasperation. That is one press conference that should never
have happened. And you know, and and and it was
that press conference which kind of they got a lot
of criticism for doing that because it was seen as
you know, trying to hog credit while the operations were on.
You don't do this while and operation is on. I

(36:12):
don't know whose idea it was to do that. Get
the Navy out there, do the press conference and you know,
wearing a dupata and sunglasses and that kind of thing
to hide their faces, you know, because I mean, of course,
anonymity is part of the the whole special forces thing.

(36:33):
You can't reveal the faces of your operators. But here's
the thing, now, because of that press conference, they got
a lot of flak for it. There are a lot
of criticism, and after that they kind of withdrew into
a shell. And so you for the longest time you
never had anyone coming out and talking about the Marcos role.

(36:54):
It's only when I started researching for the book where
I actually saw some reports which I couldn't reproduce over
there where in very great detail they mentioned what they
had done. There were some committees that were There was
one committee that looked into the twenty six eleven attacks,
and that committee happened to get this report. And when

(37:16):
I saw that, I realized that, look, they've done a lot.
They got a lot of flak for that press conference,
but that doesn't take away from the fact that they
had performed outstanding the well right, And it's just one
of those things that you know, an error of judgment.
I guess, when you've done such a great thing. It

(37:37):
was only right for them to have stepped back, let
the energy do their duty and then possibly at some
later point come up and you know, brief the press
or tell the people what they did. And the NSC
also did a fine job. I mean, you know, they
were up against impossible odds. They never trained for sit

(38:00):
like they see.

Speaker 4 (38:01):
The whole.

Speaker 3 (38:03):
Training of the NFG was a single location siege that
they had this Black Thunder two, that operation very successful
on nineteen eighty eight, four years after that disaster, called
Black Blue Star, where they were supposed to lay siege
to a particular area that's been captured by terrorists and

(38:26):
they would have an outer cordon, they would have an
inner cordon, and then they would have the strike element
that would go in and you know, going from the
air from the ground, simultaneously break in and rescue the hostages.

Speaker 4 (38:37):
This was a.

Speaker 3 (38:37):
Format that actually we had picked up from the West.
You know, urban terrorism in the twentieth century was a
very recent phenomenon. From the seventies on you saw the
PLO actually doing a wave of you know, hijackings and
urban terror. Attack in the nineteen seventies you had a
wave of urban terror. You had the PLO doing you know,
massive hijackings and to be MAGAD issue and a lot

(39:00):
of special units were set up, Sport Teams, counter Terrorist Teams,
GIG and the GSG nine on which the nerg is
modeled on. We of course went through Blue Star and
we realized that we had to set up a special
unit like that. That's how the NFG was formed. Now,

(39:21):
all of these scenarios, all of these terror incidents were
all single location sieges right where you know, you would
have all the security forces coming and you know, surrounding
a place and they had undivided attention. Mumbai, they planned
to do five parallel sieges, right, It wasn't actually three sieges,
it was five sieges. So simple math was that one

(39:44):
body pair of terrorists for one location. So you had
the old touch, the new touch, the two wings of
the TAJ Hotel, one in the Oberois, one in the
Cabard House and one in the CSD station. So the
idea of to have five parallel sieges, which would completely
I mean the numbers. You wouldn't have enough security forces

(40:07):
to storm and take five, you know, siege locations. You'll
have to kind of prioritize, which is what the energy
also did there. So this is something that you don't
train for. And that's why I called you know, the training,
the planning that's gone into this to create scenarios like this.
These are all done by military minds. And you know

(40:30):
the rule of thumb is that whenever you see operations
like this. These are not planned by militants or terrorists
or you know, these rack tag things whether it is
Jewish or Lushka or something. These are all the work
of professional military minds. This is how militaries are trained
to operate and execute these kind of operations where surprise,

(40:51):
you know, speed, stealth, all of that is part of
the that's how they plan. So if you look at it,
you see the imprint of military planning in terror attacks
in India right from nineteen ninety three where you have
multiple attacks all nearly simultaneously at the same time, you
have that in twenty sixty eleven where you have for
the first time you have a commando element, civilians who

(41:13):
trained like naval commandos who come in do that. So
all that you know suggests a very high level of training,
high level of coordination. And that's how this was done.
And precisely because they knew what the counter would be.
You know who would come, NSG would come. They are
only good at doing one location, single location siege. How

(41:34):
do we complicate things for them? Have multiple sieges? And
this is something that you know even subsequently which hasn't
which haven't been replicated. Westgate was again it was a
single location see Paris. Of course, to an extent, you
can argue one or two places, Best La and many
other places. It's been multiple it's been single sieges. Mumbai
is very unique in.

Speaker 1 (41:55):
That sense, right right.

Speaker 2 (41:57):
Another aspect of the attack that I want to discuss
with you some deep is Nariman House. The reason being
that you know, you've shared some photos with me, some
photos that were taken part of your research, and something
that struck me when I got to the part of
the Nariman House Jewish Center over there is it seems
visually the most complex site for the energy to launch

(42:20):
operations because the lanes are damn narrow, it's jam packed.
It's literally an urban landscape. The hotel by comparison, both
the hotels were literally expansive. Yeah, you had lots more
space for for the Energy to sort of prey in,
but this was one building surrounded by a bunch of
civilian buildings. There are those iconic photos where you had

(42:41):
I think civilians standing on rooftops watching it as some
sort of a cricket matches going on.

Speaker 1 (42:45):
Absolutely, yeah, that.

Speaker 2 (42:47):
Is happening in the one Kid Stadium. By the way,
No lascars buildings can't get tickets go to the rooftop top. Yeah,
so but joke's apart. So yeah, that was the landscape
over there. And this is also the place where the
saying Lost lost his life. So tell us about the
Nariman House operations specifically, you know those iconic visuals of
the helicopter holding on the top, you know, launching those.

Speaker 3 (43:10):
So the Nurban House was actually it's a Jewish center.
It's it's called the Khabar House and it's meant for
a certain sect of Jews. This is like a boarding
room for them when they're visiting where they're transiting through Mumbai.
And that is precisely the reason why the Pakistanis chose

(43:30):
it because they wanted to basically, as one of the
terrorists said, spoiled relations between India and Israel. It didn't happen,
but they tried very hard. And uh, you know, the
thing is that you had this Jewish center over there
and the Kolaba police station didn't know about it. So
it is simple. It's like, you know, one the kolabaat

(43:50):
guy supposed to know.

Speaker 4 (43:51):
What all buildings are there in my thing?

Speaker 3 (43:53):
And you know, the person in charge of the operation,
Colonel Sandebsen. He was a two IC of the NSG
unit there and he said, I had no idea that
he said, the cops didn't know about it. Now, it
was a low rise building, the Kabbada House. It was
earlier called the Naman.

Speaker 2 (44:08):
So initially you're telling me when the counter attack was
in planned, they just thought it's a random building.

Speaker 4 (44:13):
Yeah, it's just the one knew why.

Speaker 3 (44:15):
Yeah, they didn't know the significance of that building that
you know, there were Jewish people there, they were foreigners there.
They were you know, Israeli nationals, there were Americans, they
were Europeans. The toll there was it's not very high
compared to the other locations, but it was in terms
of international attention, like seven foreign national skill Israeli's, Europeans, Americans.

Speaker 4 (44:38):
Some of them dual nationalities. Uh.

Speaker 3 (44:40):
And they were killed in very cold blood, utter brutality
that was inflicted on them. And this was the Kabad
is a low rise like I mentioned, it's about I
think it was a five story building. And these were
all redeveloped properties, that is, like earlier on they were
just like small little single story buildings which were then
built upon and they were developed to about five stories

(45:03):
had that's the maximum.

Speaker 4 (45:04):
You could build around there.

Speaker 3 (45:06):
And they never knew the reason why they'd attacked this,
so they all said there was one building near Kolaba
Market that was attacked. So everything was wondering why would
they attack a building in Kolaba Market. Everything had been
chosen for some reason or the other symbolic like I mean,
for instance, my parents they lived in Jalvau. We heard
in Pawai, right, which is where a lot of veterans

(45:28):
from nineteen seventy one war live, They had chosen that
they wreckayed it as one possible thing. In fact, this guy,
David Headley's partner in crime who's now in Mumbai, who's
been brought back Taurana, was there in Pawai for two days,
living in a five star hotel next to my parents'
home and wrecking the place. And he said he's apparently

(45:50):
supposed to have said, oh, this is the place we
can get a lot of people who defeated us in
the nineteen seventy one war. You can you know, shoot
them up. And the reason they didn't pick too far? Yeah,
too far?

Speaker 4 (46:01):
You know it.

Speaker 3 (46:02):
You're a moon biker, right, how far it is to
go there, and that is the only reason they focused
on South Mumby that small little box which you could
hit very quickly. But this is the kind of planning
that they did, the recas that they did, and Cabard House,
the Narman House had a reason why it was chosen,
and it was extremely difficult to navigate maneuver through there.

(46:23):
By the time the NSG came they figured out what
was going on, they had no idea how many hostages
were there, whether they'd be whether they were dead, they
were alive. They didn't want to go in at night,
they had no night vision devices. All of those chaos
happened in the morning. They said they'll do the Helly assault,
and the Helly Assault was broadcast live. They couldn't do
anything about it. Like exactly, like you had this thing

(46:46):
of people on the rooftops.

Speaker 4 (46:48):
You had.

Speaker 3 (46:50):
Television cameras broadcasting that till the time somebody said no, no, no,
don't broadcast it live. But by then the damage had
already been done. You're the handlers telling, okay, you have
a you have a commando thing coming down cross position lelo.
You're very clearly I've heard those sayings. The conversations are chilling.
This guy handler is obviously special forces or military. Right,

(47:12):
He's telling them cross position lolo. They're going to come
down and see for us. Everyone said, what's the big deal?
Everyone could see the what is the you know, security
hazard and broadcasting a visual of a helicopter were letting
go of commandos. So he said, for civilians, it might
just look like commando's coming down, but for a trained

(47:34):
military person, he sees that. He immediately knows the weapon
profile of the guys, what they're carrying, right, and he's
immediately telling these guys that, okay, cross position lolo, which
means you just cover the entrances. Yeah, your entrances to
the field of interlocking field of fire. You said, one
person sits on that side, one person says, on this side,
watch for the doors. They're going to come. This is

(47:55):
what they're carrying. And that's how Will the gaginder lost
his life and he was storming in. So it's the
most difficult thing to do to burst into a room. Yeah,
the first person always get And they were not carrying shields.
I mean, this is that's a separate story. But why
not we weren't carrying the kind of equipment that even
normal swart units.

Speaker 4 (48:13):
Uh. You know, police units in.

Speaker 3 (48:15):
The world carry which is a heavy armored shield which
has now started coming in the last couple of years.
I guess then, Energ you should have been carrying that.
It would have saved a very very brave soldier, Wiljendre Singh.
And of course we lost on the Krishnan in the
taj that that was a rather unfortunate thing. This is see,

(48:36):
it's it's very difficult for the NSGY to operate when
there are civilians around, which is why his entire focus,
entire priority was to ensure that all the hundred odd
rooms that were there were cleared of all hostages. We
just make sure that there's no one left behind, because
if there's a crossfire, civilians can die, right and that's
the worst thing that anyone wants that civilians died, because

(48:59):
you know, we got into a firefight with the terrorists
and the civilians caught in the crossfire. So stuff like this,
and that's what made this operation very complex, very complex,
very complicated. The fact that you're operating not just in
urban spaces which are very narrow constricted movement is not easy,
but also it's like so many rooms and the terrorists

(49:22):
are running through all these rooms, and I think, I
hope they've evolved this counter terrorists drills that if buildings
like this are captured, how do you advance? And now
I think with drone tech a lot of this would happen.
And you know, so some of the young scientists who
I've spoken to who are now leading drone innovators tell

(49:42):
me that, you know, one reason. There's an I Bombay
innovator who told me that one reason I got into
making drones is that I thought that drones were the
easiest solution for something like this, A drone that could
fly through a hotel space and locate the bad guys,
like exactly like a video game, which we are now
seeing now with drones. It should should have been the solution. Technology.

(50:03):
You know, don't use so much of human you'll run
out of people at some point, but you will not
run out of enough, you know, drones, uh, sensors, unmanned
ground vehicles, those kind of things, they need to have
more of those. I guess those lessons have been taken.

Speaker 1 (50:19):
So yeah, I guess.

Speaker 2 (50:20):
Uh. You know about the point about the live broadcast
of the NAEIMA house operation, another distressing image that I have,
if I'm not wrong, is it was either a photographer
or a TV camera person who was sitting right next
to an energy sniper who was perched in a in
a building opposite broadcasting that live. And I was like,
why is there sniper does not hitting him in the face.

Speaker 1 (50:41):
Gid By, this.

Speaker 4 (50:43):
Is not no.

Speaker 3 (50:44):
I think we went very easy on the RECEI I
mean at that time it was a learning experience for everybody.

Speaker 4 (50:51):
No one knew that you would have a specter of.

Speaker 3 (50:54):
Terrorists who would be guided through voice over Internet's protocol
remote guided like you know, not just satellite phones, but
especially designed wipe communication sets subscriptions which had been purchased
from simply because they thought that it could not be
cracked by their security force. Security forces will get normal

(51:14):
cellular communication, they'll intercept, they can listen in ton, but
they won't be able to get whipe communications. So all
that planning was made, I mean, whosts to know that,
and that the fact that they set up a control tower,
a controlled room, and they had these multiple channels. And
one of the most sickening sounds from twenty six to

(51:35):
eleven is when the handler is talking to his terrors
on the ground. You can hear the in the background,
you can hear Indian TV channels in the control room
playing out. So it was it was a visual delight
for them. I mean they didn't have to do anything.
It was like they had CCTV cameras all over there.
And that's when someone woke up and said no. That's

(51:55):
when the concept of deffered broadcasts and all that started.
And but but I think the damage had been done
since then. But now I think things have changed. But
you have to now anticipate what else if there is
another terror attack like this, I mean, what else could
they think of which you haven't thought of.

Speaker 2 (52:12):
Yeah, a couple of last points in the as we
in this episode, and this is now to do with
the failures. Like we said that failures have been discussed
at nauseum, and to be honest, it would also be
sort of you know, I think a bit pointless now
seventeen years later to talk about them, because I think
many of those gaps have actually been fulfilled field sorry,

(52:33):
in the last many, many years. But there's a couple
of things I still won't talk about, and one is
this concept of intel Natha, this concept of Joe Intel, Tha,
that was not action worthy? Joe Intel, Tha, that was
you know, it was very vague.

Speaker 1 (52:49):
I don't know if you've seen those.

Speaker 2 (52:50):
Intel reports that was sent to the movie please, I
don't know if you have or haven't. I don't know
if you've seen any sort of intel reports over your
course of reporting, whether it's military intelligence or.

Speaker 1 (53:00):
IB or whomever.

Speaker 2 (53:02):
I want to understand what does an intel report actually
on paper look like. So, for example, I am the
SI of the Kolaba Police station or I am the
DCP of that of that zone. When I get the
facts back in the day now an.

Speaker 1 (53:16):
Email, I'm guessing.

Speaker 2 (53:19):
What does it say? Does it mention targets? Does it
have dates, does it have a number of terrorist might come?
Does it have the mode of attack?

Speaker 1 (53:27):
What is it?

Speaker 2 (53:28):
Where the police gets off by saying, you know, it
was very vague, what do we even do with that intelligence?

Speaker 3 (53:32):
Yeah, so you know a lot of times this is
the kind of vague alert that you would get. You'd
get a thing that there is a there is an
appreciation that there would be a terror threat to hotels
in South Mumbai. We've got that thing. So that that's
what the police also went through so the police did
what whatever they had to do with Nakab and the
they'll put a police post over there, a couple of

(53:53):
armed policemen indefinitely, and then one day they'll kind of
withdraw that came. So that is when you get a
general sense of the alert. See, don't there's no point
in blaming the policemen there, right, because he's going to
get away intel. And what happened in the case of
Mumbai thing was that it was like nine to eleven.

(54:13):
It was a failure of imagination. There was nobody sitting
in Delhi. There was intel that was pouring in right,
exactly like these sheets of paper that you have in
front of you. Individually, they wouldn't make a lot of sense.
They would be alert, alert, alert. But if you put
all these alerts together, then you would recognize a pattern

(54:34):
that there seems to be something at work here where
South Mumba is the target. Hotels are being targeted. Terrorsts
are being given Special Forces training in a dam in Mangola,
which means what does it mean water that they're obviously
going to infiltrate through the water. Special Forces training would

(54:56):
mean that they would be highly skilled, they would move
fire move do that take positions cover, which means that
I would need to have a special unit emplaced already
there quick reaction teams that can go and neutralize them.
So that kind of appreciation was never done in Delhi.
It was just so I'll tell you what happened between

(55:17):
two thousand and six and two thousand and eight, when
the entire planning for twenty six eleven was going on
in Pakistan, David Headley was already there in the LED.
Headley was a US double agent. He was actually working
for the DAY and probably the CIA, and he was
infiltrated because US US wanted to know where Osama bin

(55:38):
Laden was and they believe the LED. If you penetrated
the LT, we could get access to Obiel and al Qaeda.
Now Headley dutifully started giving his handlers intel things, saying
today I have done this. I took part in this
meeting where we were discussing attack on a Mumbai hotel.

Speaker 4 (55:59):
So by hotel that goes to CI. Now the CI,
I guess.

Speaker 3 (56:02):
He says, I can't tell the Indians everything because that
will blow my own can't. Yes, so but we will
because we have partners. We have to tell them. Look,
there is a possibility that your hotels could be attacked.
And now this continues as Headley is merely reporting to
his handlers in the US. By two thousand and eight,

(56:24):
you have twenty six alerts that have already piled up.
And the then NSCA Mknara and I interviewed him once
and he said, look, the US never told us that
there was something like that. But I said, so, you know,
you just had to study all the alerts, you would
have been able to.

Speaker 4 (56:39):
He says, the.

Speaker 3 (56:39):
US did withhold something. I mean, that was what his
grouse was. They didn't give us the full picture of
what they knew because they didn't want to betray their source.
They didn't want to blow David Headley's cover, because he
was saying Headley was arrested only when he tried to
attack a European target, which is the the Danish terror

(57:00):
plot where they plan to attack the Gillin's Post and
newspaper office inflict unspeakable barbarity on the staffers, who you
know done that cartoon of the profit. Yes, so that
is when he was picked up. Until then Headley was
free to run and cost So this created a lot

(57:21):
of bad blood between the Indian intelligence community and the Americans.
I mean, we didn't trust them as much, so which
is why you see the Americans kind of being very
forthcoming with access to David Headley after that and you know,
stuff like that. But the damage had already been done.
So it was actually a Americans didn't tell us enough.

Speaker 4 (57:42):
As R. Nessay said, uh and.

Speaker 3 (57:44):
B it was our failure not to build up that picture,
that attack, picture of an attack that was you know, imminent.
There seemed to be Mumbai hotels seemed to be on
the radar, and it is not something for Kolaba Police
Station or dcp's own one to figure out that, you know,
he needs to do something. An attack on Mumbai is
actually an attack on the country and it has to

(58:06):
be responded militarily or by the powers that be in Delhi.
So I think those were the kind of primary failures.
And of course when the attack actually took place, like
I said, there was nobody in charge.

Speaker 4 (58:19):
It was multiple agencies.

Speaker 3 (58:21):
There was police, there was paramilitary, there's army, there was
marine commandos and nobody to give orders. What you needed
was one command post there with one person in charge
on the ground and everybody is under his command. All
the police, all the forces units extraordinary, the fire brigade,

(58:42):
everybody is important, the ambulance services, maybe even the airport.
They could have, you know, imposed some kind of a
limited emergency in that area because this was a very
unusual attack. See when you understand the thing, how you
respond to a patient, like a patient who's been involved
in a very serious car crash and has literally hourked

(59:06):
or minutes to survive. Weavi somebody who's just you know,
suffered a broken bone or something like that. You have
to respond accordingly to a crisis and an emergency situation.
So everybody comes together, they pick up the person, you know,
they look after, and they make sure that he's you know,
shifted into the thing that golden as counts. That's the
problem with Mumbai. I think that never happened till the

(59:27):
very end. People didn't know what was going on. There
was like you know, every and you know what you
had things like the army commander walking in with his wife.
I mean, which country the world does this happen? I
was allowed to happen. I mean it was so tragic.
I mean when I saw that, my heart sang the
Home minister thinking, you know, hitching a ride with the

(59:48):
in his genagy.

Speaker 4 (59:49):
Then yeah, they calld relate.

Speaker 3 (59:52):
They're waiting for the Home Minister to come, and the
Home Minister's taking off with them, Southern Army commander with
his wife. I mean, little things like that. These things
should never have happened in any other thing. You should have,
you know, handled it with the kind of seriousness that
it deserved. And I think nobody really understood the enormity
of what they were, you know, faced with, and they

(01:00:12):
were just going around the motions like it was, you know,
any other ordinary thing. And it was because of those
very very great people on the ground, the Mumbai Railway announcers,
who is you know, presence of mind. Look at the guy,
the way he shouted on the public, he cleared the platforms.

Speaker 4 (01:00:30):
I mean, but for him, so many more people would
have died, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:00:34):
Or the Marcos who intervened when they did, they saved
all those people.

Speaker 4 (01:00:37):
So it was all individual acts of brave you know what.

Speaker 3 (01:00:43):
The original plot was, right, The plan was for the
fishing trawler to have been brought in here the Kuber.
They were supposed to hijack the Kobe. They were supposed
to sink it with the satellite set, with their GPS
set everything right, they were to launch that rubber boat
land on shore. All ten of them were to die

(01:01:06):
in those sieges fighting. Their bodies would be recovered with
ID cards, Indian names.

Speaker 4 (01:01:13):
Hindu names. Samir Sharma is that and all that.

Speaker 3 (01:01:16):
And you know David Hadley had done all the research,
had given them those calava red treads. So the whole
plan was that. And this is why I call it
a military operation. Now, every military plan, every military attack,
has a deception plan as well.

Speaker 4 (01:01:31):
Right now.

Speaker 3 (01:01:31):
One of the most famous deception plans of the Second
World War was Operation Mincemeat, where the Allies picked up
the body of a homeless person who had died. They
cut off his head, they put a uniform on him,
they planted fake plants that the Germans were planning to
attack somewhere else in I think it was in Italy,

(01:01:53):
and they floated that body onto a beach in Spain.
The body was found, and they knew that Spain was
crawling with the Nazi agents, and the body was found,
the plans were taken and the Germans actually got fooled
by that. This was a similar plan like Mincemeat, that
you would plant these ten bodies, they would find a
rubber boat there by some luck, and the story would

(01:02:15):
be that, oh, these are Indians, you know, how can
you connect it to those uh that rubber boat? How
can they? How can you come from Karachi in a
rubber boat. It's not possible. And that boat appears to
have been launched from nearby there only, So that was
the whole point. Now, that whole thing blew apart. When
to paramble with the casab and one of the inspectors

(01:02:39):
move by police guy who told them don't kill this.

Speaker 4 (01:02:42):
He saved, you know, had died.

Speaker 1 (01:02:44):
Those guys were very very sus and they were furious.

Speaker 3 (01:02:46):
They pat him to death or something like that, and
he said that, no, don't don't kill him, take him alive.
He's evidence. So that's a good thing about policemen. They
understand they have to make the case thing, they have
to make the.

Speaker 4 (01:02:56):
Punch nama they have to do. They have to get evidence.

Speaker 3 (01:02:59):
Right, So he knew that evidence and he captured him
alife and so he spilled the bean.

Speaker 4 (01:03:05):
So that's that. So Pakistan would not deny this fact, and.

Speaker 3 (01:03:09):
Even their leadership, the political the president admitted that, yeah,
you know, he is a Pakistani national. They had to
admit that, and those are the decent guys. Of course
it was a military attack. They had no idea that
it was there. But yeah, that's that's how it was.
It was very well planned at the highest level, possibly
in Pakistan by the commando general himself. When the planning

(01:03:31):
was on, he was in charge, and he had just
stepped down and handed over part to civilian administration, and
he wanted to make sure that, uh, the they didn't
get too close to India, right, because the military had
kind of retreated, had stepped down as president. Army chief
was Kayani, first Gisi to be. Kayani knows everything right.

(01:03:54):
Musharaff might have died, but Kayani knows the entire planning
of this thing. And I'm I'm sure about this. This
is I'm just going by my understanding of how the
Pakistani deep state works is that at some point somebody
will come out with the whole plan, how they planned this,
how they executed it. Maybe not now, but a few years,
give it some time. Like how there was that book

(01:04:17):
by Mahmad Yusuf Isi Brigadier from the S Branch, which
is a window into another world.

Speaker 4 (01:04:23):
When he wrote that book. After the withdrawal of the
Soviet Union from.

Speaker 3 (01:04:27):
Afghanistan, he was Isi and his book, which he wrote
in great secrecy, he writes about how it was this
massive Isi, CIA and even the Chinese intelligence plan to
fight this proxy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
It's one of the most influential books written post nineteen

(01:04:49):
forty five. And so I believe that the mastermind of
twenty six eleven was a Pakistani officer. Will come out
at some point and will reveal what they did. How
they did might not be now because it's it's not
a good time with a lot of unknown gunment running
around Turkish right right.

Speaker 2 (01:05:11):
I know when you were talking about the list that
wasn't a graphic. One of the aspects that in your book,
but how that the NSG.

Speaker 1 (01:05:26):
How to dissolvement fighting.

Speaker 6 (01:05:30):
Was that the artis facts that had the radio for
them posting during Pott fire, stuff like that. You convenient
sot what to the million sort of you knows, but
the equipment back there.

Speaker 2 (01:05:46):
But that's sort of what happens when you don't have
one single person on the ground, you know, just making
sure everything is going fine.

Speaker 1 (01:05:52):
Uh right, something as we end this episode.

Speaker 2 (01:05:55):
Uh, would you share my assessment that twenty six eleven
was like the Cargill movement for India's internal security. You
have similar threads, right, you have introduced pouring in, but
you unfortunately not being able to sort of, you know,
weave it into one single big picture. You also have
that very interesting thing where your techn is so good

(01:06:15):
by the way that during the operation you were able
to tap the devices to know in twenty s eleven
you were able to tap the communication between the terrists
and the handlers, and back then not many know this.

Speaker 3 (01:06:25):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:06:26):
I think it was the raw who was able to
tap a phone call between uh, the army chief who
was between theshuff and his wife chief one of them
was in China, I'm not youngeah, and they were discussing,
which is how Minia was able to say that, oh, bro,
this is actually Pakistan regulars.

Speaker 1 (01:06:43):
Deception was there in Calculate as well.

Speaker 2 (01:06:45):
It was not supposed to Pakistan regulars were irregulars, mujahideen,
not wearing uniforms, not carrying ID cards, stuff like that,
actually carrying idea cards.

Speaker 1 (01:06:52):
I'm sorry, that's how.

Speaker 2 (01:06:54):
That's how they kind of figured they were and so yeah,
So my point being what Gill did for the Indian military,
especially in the army in terms of reforms, command and structure,
in terms of refers to the ammunition the arms they carry,
did that also happen for indental security with.

Speaker 4 (01:07:12):
Oh yes absolutely.

Speaker 3 (01:07:12):
I think twenty sixty eleven was a kind of a
landmark event as far as internal security reforms go, and
there's been a lot of lessons that were learned after that.
You had special agencies that were set up, special bodies
like the MAC, the you know, multi Agency center that
was set up where the IB basically sits and meets

(01:07:33):
every morning. It's the ib's a coordination meeting exactly like
the coordination meetings that we have here on the news floor,
where you had all multi agencies sitting over there and
exchanging intel and saying that, look, we have this thing.
And so if somebody were to come up and say that,
look we have a threat on Mumbai, this thing hotel attacks,
somebody else would say, listen, we saw a group of guys,

(01:07:55):
you know, going to Mangala Dam, and we saw some
SSG guys training them. So you could link up the
very quickly. You could build up that picture right as
it develops. That is something that was implemented immediately after
twenty sixty eleven. The NI National Investigation Agency was set
up immediately after that as a fallout of this to

(01:08:16):
specifically investigate terror related cases. And many other reforms have
happened ever since. But these are the two agencies that
were great which we didn't have before. MAC was there,
but it was mostly defunct. Intelligence sharing was unheard of,
and you had this NIA. There was a crying need
for an agency, specialist investigating team like the NI, which

(01:08:37):
incidentally is headed by you know, an outstanding Mumbai police
officer then who who was one of the few policemen
to actually fire back at the at the Comma hospital and.

Speaker 4 (01:08:57):
He was trying to remember his name?

Speaker 1 (01:09:00):
Is it Sadan?

Speaker 4 (01:09:03):
Who's now the head of the NA.

Speaker 3 (01:09:05):
So it's like, I mean, amazing, seventeen years later, that
iconic Mumbai police officer who actually picked up an ak
and went and fired at the terrorists in the Coma
hospital is now heading the NI, which is one of
those agencies that was set up after the born out
of this the failures of that, and you know, and
it is there. We've seen it even in the Red

(01:09:26):
fort attack for instance, where all the intel came, the
cell was uncovered, but then somebody you know, goofed up,
as in there was not enough intel sharing. Probably Janek
Police was doing its own thing. They didn't tell the IB,
they didn't tell the Teli Police special cell. Possibly there

(01:09:47):
was a race for credit or something, and then they
took the explosives back with them and you know what happened,
the handling and all of that. So there were some
other lessons that I think we haven't learned and we
can't afford this kind of you know, to be constantly
in learning. I mean, the Red fourth thing. You have
to hand it to the agencies. It was an outstanding

(01:10:07):
work of slew thing and you know, good old fashioned
police work where they uncovered this module, they've figured out
all its you know, members and all that. But then
they didn't tell the IB, they didn't tell the Delhi police,
which is why that one bomber got away. Right, they
should have been able to pick up everybody simultaneously to
ensure that there was no other There was no leakage,

(01:10:28):
no one got away. But I guess those are those
little mistakes. But ninety two thousand and eight was actually
a seminal moment in our war against terror, our fight
against terran. Hopefully we've learned many lessons and incidents of
this will not happen. And now I think the biggest

(01:10:49):
lesson of course is posts Indur where we're not just
being defensive, but we're also being offensive or called out.
This state versus non state thing, right, the fact that
you cannot hide behind this thing of a non state.

Speaker 4 (01:11:04):
Actor and there's no non state actor.

Speaker 3 (01:11:06):
I think we saw it very clearly in the funerals
of the Jewish people who had been killed that you
saw the Park military there for the first time. So
those kind of things the Prime Minister just called it out.
Nuclear blackmail is called out, the fact that any attack
on India will be seen as you know, an attack
on India and will be responded to militarily. All of
those things have been called So I think we've come

(01:11:26):
a long way in the last seventeen years.

Speaker 1 (01:11:29):
Yeah right, great, I think we'll ended there. Thanks.

Speaker 2 (01:11:33):
But before we go, one just small tangent, because we
were discussing Marcos early in the episode. I want your
confirmation or your thoughts on this legend that is on
the internet that the Marcos are often called by the
terrorists Jamun Kashmir as the Daddy Valley Forge because the
Navy is supposedly the only service brandch that allows the
officers to maintain beards. But though I'm guessing the Army

(01:11:54):
SF also. But is it true that the Marcos are
known as the.

Speaker 3 (01:11:59):
Val dad yel forgen Yeah, yeah, those are names that
they've been called. Yeah, operate around, yeah, around the waters
and stuff like that.

Speaker 4 (01:12:09):
Yeah. Interesting, Yeah, but it's all adds to the legend
of the Marcos.

Speaker 1 (01:12:13):
Yeah. But glad we could discuss the Marcos.

Speaker 2 (01:12:15):
Like you know, you were saying that this is one
one event in India as history, that is they booted.

Speaker 1 (01:12:20):
It's a lot of credit.

Speaker 2 (01:12:22):
Uh, and it's something that really comes out in your book.
So thanks on leave for this episode, Thanks for having
chat as always, Thanks so much, and thanks as always
to our listeners and viewers. That's it for this week's Defense.
Does for more Tunion next week. Till then, stay safe
and not lost any boundaries for their passport.

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Recalling 26/11 Mumbai Attack, the Kargil of India’s Internal Security | S3 | Ep 31

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Recalling 26/11 Mumbai Attack, the Kargil of India’s Internal Security | S3 | Ep 31