FRONT PAGE | Tuesday, December 2, 2008 | Email | Print | 
More skeletons tumble out
Pioneer News Service | New Delhi
Govt acts busy to hide its blunders
Two days before the terrorists struck at Mumbai, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) had intercepted this chilling message: Char halal ho gaye jenab (four have been killed).” Already in possession of information about a possible attack on Mumbai by sea route, the RAW passed on this message to the Coast Guard to increase vigilance along the coast. The matter ended there. No one cared to react. Two days later, the terror boat made a safe landing at the Cuffe Parade port in Mumbai coast.
Reports said the terrorists relayed the above message to their Pakistani masters after they captured an Indian fishing vessel off the Gujarat coast and killed four of its crew. The terrorists who left Karachi in a Pakistani Merchant Vessel MV Al Husseni then shifted to the Indian fishing boat MV Kuber to reach Mumbai.
This is just one piece of input that went abegging. The terrorists were in constant touch with their ‘masters’ across the border and several of their messages were intercepted by the Indian intelligence, who passed them on to both the Centre and the Maharashtra Government. There were similar other specific inputs which intelligence officials processed and warned of an imminent attack on Mumbai. Some warnings specifically mentioned Taj and Oberoi hotels as possible targets. For once, it would be unfair to lay the blame at the door of RAW, Intelligence Bureau or National Security Adviser.
But no one cared to read the writing on the wall. The attack on Mumbai is a shameful saga of criminal negligence on part of the State and Central Governments. The buck does not stop with Shivraj Patil or Vilasrao Deshmukh. The entire machinery failed to act, though the Government may be busy in fixing accountability for the Mumbai attacks.
During interrogation, Ajmal Amir Kasab, the arrested terrorist, told the investigators that they made a last minute decision to shift to the Indian shipping vessel to avoid detection by the Indian Navy and Coast Guard.
The Lashker terrorist said his other team members caught hold of five men on MV Kuber and then killed four of them while keeping one — Amarsinh — alive to drive the launch vehicle to Cuffe Parade port in Mumbai.
After the Mumbai attacks, the location of the call was found to be in the area where Al Husseni was sailing. The Coast Guard captured the Indian trawler MV Kuber and found a Global Positioning System abandoned on it while it was drifting nearly four nautical miles off the coast of Mumbai early on Thursday morning, several hours after the terrorist attacks began.
Investigators were going through the call data details downloaded from the satellite phone also recovered from the abandoned trawler. Many of the call details have revealed numbers that have been traced back to the Lashkar’s chief of operations, Muzamil.
If the intelligence inputs were overlooked because of scepticism and callousness of the authorities, there is little to explain their failure to react to alarming information provided by the fishermen that RDX was being smuggled by sea route to Mumbai.
The vice-president of the Fishermen’s Association in Krishnapura village of Gujarat’s Navsari district has been questioned by the security agencies after he claimed that he had alerted the Maharashtra Government about some suspicious activities in the Arabian sea.
Devabhai Bhagwatibhai Tandel has been interrogated by the security agencies, including the Gujarat Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS), about the information he had sent to his counterpart in Mumbai, Damodhar Tandel, who later passed on the information to the Maharashtra Government.
“About four months ago, I had told Damodhar about the suspicious fishing vessels in Gujarat waters that went into Maharashtra waters for fishing. Damodhar had then written a letter to the Deputy Commissioner of Mumbai Port Authority, informing them about the unusual development,” Devabhai told PTI. .
“Damodhar had written the letter in August and had also sent a copy to Fisheries Department of Maharashtra,” he added. In the letter, Damodhar had raised concerns over some of the fishing trawlers coming from Gujarat, mainly belonging to Bangladeshi fishermen settled in Gujarat.
He had further stated that there was a possibility that one or two trawlers were bringing RDX to Mumbai. Damodar had requested the port authorities to stop entry of these fishing trawlers into Mumbai waters.
When asked if he was questioned by any of the security agencies, Devabhai said, “Some agencies have come and asked me questions about the suspicious activities about which I had told Damodar.”
Another shocking piece of revelation that places Maharashtra Government in the dock for the death of its top cops is the fact that they were wearing defective bullet-proof jackets.
Former IPS officer YP Singh, who quit the police department in 2005, said the vests
that were sent to him for testing sometime in 2001 were found defective.
In 2001, I tested some of these vests and found them to be substandard. I do not know if the vests from this lot were finally purchased or not,” said.
“But in 2004, another batch of vests was tested by another officer and they too were found to be defective. Most likely, the police officers who died on Wednesday night were wearing these vests,” Singh said.
The purchasing is done by the department headed by the joint commissioner of police (administration), Singh said.
“There is a big cartel operating here,” Singh, who quit after being fed up with corruption in the police force, said.
Head of Anti-Terrorist Squad Hemant Karkare, encounter specialist Vijay Salasar and Additional Commissioner of Police Ashok Kamte died when a terrorist opened fire on the vehicle they were riding on the night of November 26.
An hour before that, TV channels had shown Karkare putting on a helmet and bullet-proof vest and heading out as the first reports of terrorist attacks came in.
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