I woke up at 7’O clock on Thursday morning and picked up the paper to find the headlines “Terror rips apart Mumbai”. I was shocked to see this news and immediately turned on the TV to see the coverage on news channel. I kept on watching the channels for 2 hours and whole matter slowly started sinking in.
[Pic Courtesy: Rediff India]
I could not believe what I was watching. There were incidents of blasts in recent past but open firing on public is some thing new kind of terror. Of course these things were happening in J&K but not in other places. The attack was simultaneously conducted at many high profile places. There was also information that terrorists reached the hospitals where the injured people were being treated. As per today more than 180 people are dead and above 300 are injured. India also lost 2 NSG commandos, 1 Top ATS cop, 1 encounter speacialist, and 1 ACP of Maharastra police. Apart from human lives we also lost the Taj Heritage charm and the belief of foreigners regarding safety in India. This will surely affect the Indian tourism for a long time.
The prolonged operations to flush out terrorists happened at three places, Hotel Taj, Hotel Trident/Oberoi and Nariman House. It took almost 60 hours to neutralize the terrorists and secure these places from them.
I think terrorists plan was to cause terror and damage the image of India. They have succeeded to quite an extent in their plan.
I have few points to discuss related to our forces, intelligent and media.
Intelligence:
But how all this happened? Where is our intelligence bureau? The amount of ammunition the terrorists had brought for the operation is much more than enough to keep the Indian forces busy for two days. Is it this easy to bring ammunition of this scale to India and start operation? Authorities started giving justification that the terrorists came by the sea. But if this is a hole in the system then anticipate the possibilities and take some actions. This cannot be a lame excuse.
Local people should also support the intelligence bureau with the information. There was news that these guys came and stayed in Nariman House for past few days and made this house as base for all the operations. Local people also report that these guys have ordered for huge amounts of dry fruits, around 100kgs of meat and other food items. If there was no celebration and gathering then why would someone order this much? This information could be given to IB for some interrogation. But most of us see and forget the unusual things happen in our neighborhood. And there is one more dilemma even if I report the incident what action police will take. It could also happen that the person who reports more interrogated than the real culprits! This is where our whole system has flaw.
Media:
Thanks to our TV news channels I was getting the live update and of course the terrorists were also viewing the same update!! They had satellite smart phones and they were in touch with their mastermind. There was no issue for the getting the update about the action our security guards were taking to neutralize them!
Free media doesn’t mean broadcast whatever it wants. Media should act responsibly, not just to fight for viewer rating. When forces requested media not to show the live images, some channels stopped showing the live coverage but some still didn’t. The channels that stopped the live coverage started telling that they also could also show the live coverage but they were not doing it as the forces requested it. I just felt this statement as media is doing favor on the government! They should be made aware of the state of media in communist countries.
Another funny thing what I saw was terrorists called India TV and talked to them for 10 minutes. Without much listening to these guys’ questions he just kept on blabbering some nonsense. When reporter asked that what was the demand, they didn’t have anything in mind. Terrorists were discussing with each other. They tried to tell that they are from Hyderabad but they accent which they were using was Pakistani.
Government:
Just now I heard deputy CM saying that the plan was to kill 5000 people. But due to swift action from our police and Special Forces the toll is minimized. They have captured huge amount of RDX and live bombs.
Is it some kind of consolation? Or just to subside the casualties that have already happened?
Thank God, terrorist could not bring the amount of ammunition that they planned for; they lost some part in the Sea.
Other political parties:
This is time for solidarity than blaming government for each and every step it is taking. As there is polling happening in some states, surely these politicians will highlight this event to attract votes.
This whole thing should be made communal issue. That will create internal agitations which may be one of the terrorist intentions.
Police force:
Intelligence tells that it had informed Mumbai police that there would be some attacks carried out on Taj and Oberoi. Then why was no action taken there?
We need to note that when terrorists’ use advanced automated machine guns how do we expect our police constables to fight them with the traditional gun, which needs to be reloaded for every shot. If they try to engage the terrorist in firing, this would just be mere suicidal attempt. This could be the reason why we lost lives of our policemen.
Police force also should ensure they constantly maintain their physical fitness. For these kinds of operations they are expected to move and run as swiftly as the terrorists do. Terrorists get a rigorous training but what about police force (not NSG/ATS or any special task force). I guess the training provided to them is like install software and forget. There will be not updates available!
At the end of 60 hrs NSG/ATS/Police force has secured all the three places by killing altogether 9 terrorists and capturing one. My hearty salutes to these brave men who came to flush these hiding terrorists and save lives of innocent people. We will always be indebted to these guys who come and secure our lives by putting their life at risk.
Anyway I accept that, it is easier for me to sit and write blogs about this incident than face this personally. They people who were directly or indirectly attached to this whole incident only know how tough it is.
But I think there should be some action taken at least after this incident or else it will be forgotten like incidents. People tend to forget the mayhem after few days and life runs as usual until another incident happens. This short-term memory is very dangerous. Take example of US, after 9/11 there is not even a single attack on US. It is not that terrorists planning anything there, US intelligence foils all the bids for attack. We need such an intelligence team rather than highly trained police flooded everywhere. Normal life will not continue if you increase the security guards at every possible target. This will make the whole country as a terrified state!
We need to answer the root cause and we have to take stern actions at this level. The toughest steps have to be taken to clean up their bases. We also need a solid borders. There should be strong people identification and location system. We need to educate people to act responsibly. Now and then army/navy/STF cannot come to rescue, we need to strengthen our police force regularly to ensure they are capable enough to fight these terrorists. We also need advanced technologies to help our STF combat fast.
I also know these all things will not happen overnight but they should be initiated and followed. Someday we will see our system becoming more resilient to all these terrorists activities. Hope some Government implements all these and the opposing parties support this!!!
Jai Hind.
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