The Siege: The Attack on the Taj Mumbai

by Cathy Scott-Clark

  The handler Abu Qahafa, ‘the Bull’, has never been identified. Nor has Major Iqbal, David Headley’s ISI contact, who recruited ‘the Mice’, his information gatherers in Mumbai, and who boasted of an Indian double agent called ‘Honey Bee’. None of these sources have ever been found or identified.

  In April 2012 the US government announced a $10m bounty on the head of Hafiz Saeed, the co-founder of Lashkar and amir of Jamaat-ud-Dawa, its parent organization, for his role in the Mumbai attacks. But Saeed remains a free man. When we met him in the outfit’s sprawling campus at Muridke, protected by legions of armed guards and checkpoints, Saeed was dismissive of the claims made against him, playing up to an audience of several thousand religious students graduating from the outfit’s college. ‘I am the West’s bogeyman,’ he said scoffing, ‘worth millions of dollars to someone. But I am not in hiding. I am here only, sitting with you.’ He combed through his beard, and then gestured with two open arms to his students, who cheered: ‘God is Great.’ Then Saeed stood, pointing to the heavens. ‘They have not come for me, from up there,’ he said, referencing the drone strikes that have killed so many in Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, ‘or from there.’ He pointed to the dusty lanes outside, evoking the extraordinary renditions that saw terror suspects detained and transported to CIA black sites. ‘And that is because America needs me to distract their people away from the collapse of their own country.’ Cheers rang out, as Saeed nodded in appreciation, shuffling out to the awaiting convoy of pick-ups, with their armed outriders, many of whom sported the same tidy, institutionalized look: Aviator shades, ironed khaki strides, army short back and sides and assault rifles. The recent assassination of the FIA investigator and prosecutor Chaudhry Zulfiqar Ali will ensure that the truth about Mumbai and Hafiz Saeed’s involvement in it will remain suppressed just that little while longer.

  Rip

  In total, 166 people were killed and over 300 injured during the terrorist attacks of November 2008. Thirty-three died at the Taj:

  Vijay Banja – chef, killed in kitchens

  Willem-Jan Berbers – Belgian–Dutch guest, shot while he was checking in

  Senator Ralph Burkei –German politician and TV producer, died from his injuries after falling from a window

  Gautan Gosain – chef, killed in kitchens

  Chaitlall Gunness – guest, shot in room 551

  Rajan Kamble – Taj engineer, shot in Chambers evacuation

  Kaizad Kamdin – chef, killed in kitchens

  Neeti Singh Kang – wife of Karambir, died in room on sixth floor

  Samar Veer Kang – aged five, son of Karambir

  Uday Singh Kang – aged twelve, son of Karambir

  Hematlata Kasipillai – Malaysian woman, her body was found in room 637

  Feroz Khan – killed while visiting an MP in the hotel

  Ravindra Jagan Kuwar – security officer, shot in hotel

  Andreas Liveras – British entrepreneur, killed in Chambers

  Douglas Markell – Australian businessman, shot trying to escape third floor

  Faustine Martis – head waiter in the Sea Lounge, killed in kitchens

  Zaheen Mateen – chef, killed in kitchens

  Michael Stuart Moss – Canadian GP, killed by pool

  Gunjan Narang – friend of Amit Thadani, shot in cellars

  Nilam Narang – mother of Gunjan, killed in cellars

  Vishnu Narang – father of Gunjan, shot in cellars

  Sadanand Patil – trainee manager, shot in head in lobby

  Rupinder Randhava – teacher, killed in Chambers evacuation

  Boris Rego – chef, killed in cellars

  Elizabeth Russell – nurse from Canada, shot by pool

  Sabina Sehgal Saikia – writer, died in Sunrise Suite

  Rajiv Sarasvati – guest, killed in room on fourth floor above Will Pike and Kelly Doyle

  Rehmatullah Shaukatali – head waiter in Shamiana, shot in restaurant

  Maqsood Shiekh – killed while visiting an MP in the hotel

  Rahul Shinde – reserve constable in SRPF, killed during exit from CCTV room

  Hemant Talim – chef, shot in kitchens

  Sandeep Unnikrishnan – Major from NSG killed in Palm Lounge

  Thomas Varghese – head waiter, killed in kitchens

  Lucy the sniffer dog – shot by the Palace lobby

  A Note on Sources

  There were many challenges in getting to grips with the siege of the Taj hotel. Crises breed confusion. People under fire or captive in a burning building can have wildly differing memories of the same events, making it difficult for us to build a reliable timeline with which to reconstruct events as they happened. Mindful of this, we interviewed hundreds of people for this book across four continents, and in ten countries: guests, Taj staffers, Special Forces, police, soldiers, eye-witnesses, journalists covering the attacks, foreign investigators, diplomats, and foreign and Indian intelligence agents (serving and retired), as well as many members of the Indian emergency services, including firefighters, ambulance drivers and hospital orderlies, along with surgeons and nurses.

  Once we had amassed a dossier of views, we identified key scenes and then tried to build a consensus for each of them, matching the transcribed statements to hard data. Mobile phones were useful. Often a text message sent by a guest, a hotel manager or a policeman would lock down the disputed time of a particular scene. We recovered hundreds of text messages, and dated and timed photographs taken on phones, some of which we reference in the text, but the majority were deployed in the invisible service of anchoring events in the right time and place.

  We obtained audio files and transcripts from the wiretaps placed on the gunmen’s phones from Indian, US and British security sources, the most complete to be assembled, which includes material never published before. They were translated and cross-checked as multiple languages were spoken, using idioms that were sometimes hard to pin down. We compared wiretap transcripts of the gunmen talking inside the hotel with the memories of captive Taj staffers and guests who were in the room with them as they took advice from their controllers in Karachi, which enabled us to home in on the timing and accuracy of an event.

  CCTV footage was also matched to events recounted in interviews. However, some of the hotel footage continues to throw up questions for us regarding the identities of two of the Taj attackers. Although the police remain insistent that Abu Ali was the attacker in yellow and therefore part of the front lobby team and that Abu Umer was the attacker dressed all in black and part of the Leopold team, we believe that the CCTV footage proves the reverse to be the case. In transcripts of the terrorists’ intercepted conversations with their handlers in Pakistan, Ali claims repeatedly that he has an injured leg and cannot perform his duty properly – police say he was hit by a ricocheting bullet when the gunmen attacked and killed the Taj’s sniffer dog team in the Palace lobby. On the CCTV film the only terrorist with any visible leg injury is the terrorist in black, who is limping, with one shoe off and a piece of cloth tied around his foot. If these two identities have been switched then all the trial court documents are inaccurate. We found numerous other inconsistencies regarding which gunmen were in which location, and photographs of the bodies of Abu Umer and Abu Rehman ‘Bada’ have never been made available.

  We accessed thousands of unpublished court documents from the trial of Ajmal Kasab, including his multiple interrogations. Many of these accounts were conflicting, but we incorporated them into our timeline, the affidavits amplifying the statements given to us. Similarly, police contacts allowed us to read many thousands of pages from Crime Branch evidence books, amassed during the criminal inquiry into 26/11, including all of the witness statements and forensic evidence reports. We also accessed the confidential annexes submitted to the Pradhan Commission, as well as appraisals by foreign intelligence services that lent technological assistance to India during the assault and forensic services afterwards. We studied the FBI analysis provided to investigator
s in Mumbai and the more complex intelligence dossier shared with domestic and foreign intelligence in New Delhi.

  Inevitably, some of these reconstructed events will jar with individual memories that placed a person somewhere else, at a different time, as might some of the dialogue, although we have tried to show every re-created scene to as many parties as possible to ensure accuracy. A few quotations have been compared to or directly extracted from interviews survivors gave at the time to cable news channels and newspapers, so as to capture the authenticity of that moment – the thoughts they had back then, rather than with the benefit of hindsight.

  During the research for this book we viewed thousands of photographic stills of the attacks, using newspaper libraries in India and the UK, and hundreds of hours of TV footage from most of the Indian and international cable news channels. Among the most dramatic accounts was Terror in Mumbai, the award-winning film made by the British director Dan Reed that was broadcast around the world. We also translated Sachin Waze’s written account of the attacks, Jinkun Harleli Ladhai (A Battle Won and Then Lost) from its original Marathi. As Waze is a retired police officer and encounter specialist and he interviewed a great number of police officers who were still serving, his work provides an interesting perspective from within the force, albeit different from ours in many instances. The book 26/11 Mumbai Attacked, edited by Harinder Baweja, published in 2009, is an early take on the attacks, but contains some solid forensic reporting, especially by Ashish Khetan, investigations editor for Tehelka magazine, who examined the intelligence trail that foretold of the attacks and the security briefings ignored by the Taj and other Mumbai institutions. For a broader view on the historic problems facing the Mumbai police force it is also worth reading, as we did, The Untouchables, Srinivasan Jain’s overview first published in Open magazine.

  The sections that relate to Pakistan, Lashkar-e-Toiba and the country’s security apparatus are the culmination of eighteen years’ work as foreign correspondents, writers and filmmakers in the Islamic Republic, in which we have amassed a large number of contacts working in counter-terrorism and de-radicalization, and students of sectarianism in its multiple guises. For The Siege we spent many months in Pakistan, working with civil servants, retired intelligence officials, diplomats, serving and retired soldiers, and civilian investigators, as well as Pakistani academics and journalists. A group of researchers continued on our behalf when we left. On several occasions, they were asked to leave a village or town by men claiming to be intelligence agents. The ISI remains extremely sensitive about the issue and is keen for it not to be probed too deeply.

  We reached out to dozens of serving and former Lashkar cadres, including most of the leadership of the various factions (welfare, religious, military), visiting some of their training and education centres in Muzaffarabad and Muridke. This took many months to broker, some of it done via the offices of retired intelligence officials. We also interviewed key members of and office holders within other Sunni sectarian groups that have closely observed Lashkar and know this world, including Sipah-e-Sahaba, renamed Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat in 2002, and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. Both organizations have been outlawed as terrorist outfits in Pakistan and the US, making these meetings drawn out and sensitive but extremely useful when they eventually came off. All of these interviews provided the clearest thoughts on the context for Operation Bombay, the growing suspicions about David Headley within Lashkar – that eventually concluded he was ‘a useful US spy’ – and the aftermath.

  Numerous insights were given by the FIA, whose inquiry did what it could, within the remit set. FIA agents, serving and retired, from all over the country, many of whom have a long history of analysing terror, provided invaluable commentary on Lashkar’s recruiting strategy and procurement operation. A foreign intelligence service showed us the evidence pack assembled by the FIA and we had access to its complete prosecution dossier for thirteen named offenders, most of them intermediaries in the final operation. We also read the interrogation reports for those on trial.

  On Lashkar, we learned much picking through the three volumes of Ham Ma’en Lashkar-e-Taiba Ki (We, the Mothers of Lashkar-e-Taiba), which runs to more than 1,000 pages, and was written by Umm-e-Hammad, the head of Lashkar’s women’s section, allegedly the mother of two Lashkar cadres who died in combat. It contains fascinating insights into the formation of the outfit and its philosophy, by charting the lives and deaths of 184 ‘martyrs’. An exceptional review of this work, by C. M. Naim, was published by Outlook magazine on 15 December 2008. In April 2013, the Combating Terror Center, at West Point, published The Fighters of Lashkar-e-Taiba: Recruitment, Training, Deployment and Death. It analysed the paths of 900 fighters, taking material from Lashkar’s Urdu publications, with the aim of spotlighting the outfit’s methodology given the ‘broader international consciousness’ about it after 26/11. It is statistically interesting but quite distant from the essence of Lashkar. Finally, Steven Tankel’s Storming the World Stage: The Story of Lashkar-e-Taiba, is a good attempt at charting the rise of Lashkar and the 26/11 attacks, which contains some interesting translations of Lashkar’s own material.

  We learned much from parallel inquiries into Lashkar run in the UK, France, Germany, Australia and the US, all of which were especially helpful in describing the role of Sajid Mir, Lashkar’s deputy head of foreign operations, and David Headley, painting a compelling picture of the latter as a DEA provocateur and a US intelligence source/informer. These accounts by credible agencies and veteran observers, with clearances to access classified material, all come down on the side of Headley being tolerated by elements within the US intelligence community, as he promised, tantalizingly, to lead investigators ever closer to arresting Osama bin Laden. The US intelligence community itself is less eager to describe Headley as anything other than a terrorist, with the CIA and FBI declining to comment on the record. Headley’s American relatives gave us their own opinions. David Headley’s own account of events comes primarily from his FBI and Indian intelligence interrogations.

  Jean-Louis Bruguière, the former Vice-President of the Tribunal de Grande Instance, in Paris, one of France’s leading investigative magistrates who dealt with counter-terrorism, provided a clear view of the operation to track Sajid Mir and what that revealed about Lashkar’s attempts to transform itself into a global brand similar to Al-Qaeda. In turn, the best published work done on Headley to date is by Sebastian Rotella, for ProPublica and PBS, who described forensically, and even-handedly, Headley’s rise and fall. Rotella has written a useful e-book too, Pakistan and the Mumbai Attacks: The Untold Story, while Bruce Riedel’s Deadly Embrace: Pakistan, America, and the Future of Global Jihad is essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand the relationship between the Pakistan deep state and jihad.

  Some in the Mumbai police force helped considerably, allowing us access to some of the Control Room logs, evidence books and analyses, which we married with what was secured using right-to-information legislation by Vinita Kamte, the widow of the slain police officer Hemant Kamte. Vinita and her family have struggled to pin down an accurate picture of the killings in Rang Bhavan Lane, and have worked doggedly to draw out detail from officers who it seems have done what they can to fog events. These logs give a compelling snapshot of the chaos that overwhelmed the force. The full interrogation video and transcript prepared at Nair Hospital, where Kasab was first questioned after being captured, were also invaluable.

  The stories from within the Taj were painstakingly drawn from Taj staffers and their families, as well as guests and diners. Without them, and especially the Taj chefs and managers, we would never have understood the sacrifices they made in the hours before any rescue took shape. Without doubt, the unarmed Taj security team, the Black Suits, as well as the hotel’s chefs and managers, saved hundreds of lives.

  Acknowledgements

  An enormous and heartfelt thank you to everyone at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in Mumbai who took a risk in collaborating with u
s. In some cases they did this physically, walking us through Mumbai and the hotel. Others spent hours reliving the events from afar. Thanks especially to Amit Peshave, Mallika Jagad, Grand Executive Chef Hemant Oberoi and Sous-Chef Nitin Minocha, who patiently explained the internal workings of the vast Taj machine so that we could understand the minutiae of its processes. We hope we have created some kind of consensus and also a testament to the staff who survived and those who succumbed. Thanks also to Florence Martis and family for opening up the life of the remarkable Faustine Martis.

  Thanks to Nikhila Palat, Director of PR at the Taj, for being patient, even when the hotel’s goals differed from ours. Also to Deepa Misra Harris, Senior Vice-President of sales and marketing. Thanks to Padmini Mirchandani, publisher at Pictor, for The Taj on Apollo Bunder, which brilliantly depicted the history of the hotel, including a chapter on the attacks. We also need to thank Charles Allen, who wrote it, along with Sharada Dwivedi, Mumbai’s prima historian. There are many others inside the hotel who have asked not to be named. Thanks to all of you for talking to us.

  Dozens of soldiers and police officers who spoke to us also do not want to be named, and we are very grateful to them.

  Thanks to Rakesh Maria for giving us his time. Particular thanks must go to Vishwas Nangre Patil and Rajvardhan Sinha for giving us detailed accounts of the police’s best attempts at detecting the attacks and then containing them. Deven Bharti was key to our understanding of the ending of the siege and the electronic monitoring of Lashkar’s handlers. Deepak Dhole and several others from the stations that surrounded the Taj were patient with us, while officials in state and national domestic intelligence took risks in expanding on the trail of warnings, explaining, frankly, the electronic monitoring operation during the days of terror. One Intelligence Bureau stalwart has moved into a different area of public service, while the other continues to serve. Two more are retired and took considerable risks in coming forward. Thank you, Brigadier Govind Singh Sisodia and family, for walking us through many aspects of the National Security Guard (NSG) operation. Thanks also to J. K. Dutt, whose overview of the NSG mobilization and modernization was critical.