LASHKAR

by Mukul Deva

  For the Indian leadership too, this time it was a totally different ball game. The festering wounds of the Mumbai blasts, the Akshardham outrage and the attack on the Indian Parliament were not far from public memory. They were ripped wide open by this latest and most horrendous outrage. The Indian public wanted blood and they wanted justice. And this time they wanted it fast.

  The normally soft-spoken and urbane Indian Prime Minister radiated a grim determination as he called for the Crisis Management Committee to present full details of the terror strike to an emergency session of the Cabinet at 1030 hours the next day. ‘Our countrymen have shown tremendous fortitude and patience. The patience of this nation has been repeatedly and severely tested. It is high time we put an end to this and send out a clear and unequivocal message to the terrorists and the rogue states that continue to support them. This time the guilty must be made to pay.’ He added, ‘We have to ensure that those responsible for these bombings are brought to book even if it means sending out more people in harm’s way. That is going to be the sole and immediate priority of this administration now…and at any time in the immediate future.’

  As the magnitude of the crisis slowly sank in there was considerable confusion at all levels. However, the Indian Crisis Management Team was considerably battle-hardened by the constant terror attacks it had been coping with in recent years. It swung into action immediately; for once there was no dithering in the Indian response.

  0335 hours, 30 October 2005, Anti-Terrorist Task Force, New Delhi.

  A red alert went out to Bikaner, Gorakhpur and the Attari border to intercept the fleeing terrorists. Unfortunately, the Attari Mail was crossing the border when the call was received. By the time the recipient put down the phone the train had already crossed the border and entered Pakistan.

  At 0500 hours the Attari Express clocked in at Attari Railway Station. Getting off the train the two men headed for the nearest telephone booth and called the mobile number they had been given.

  ‘You have reached. Good.’ The man at the other end had obviously been waiting for the call. ‘Just go to the refreshment counter near the exit gate and wait for me there.’

  The man who strode up to them fifteen minutes later wore a black cap and leather coat that would have made the Gestapo proud. ‘Follow me…and keep your mouths shut.’ He flashed some kind of an identity card and they were immediately hustled through without any papers being produced or scrutinized. Two hours later, Team Two of the Lashkar was resting comfortably at the ISI safe house on the outskirts of Mari, just north of Lahore.

  Team Two had eluded justice. However, the other members of the Lashkar were still within grasp of the Indian security forces.

  ‘I don’t want the trains to Bikaner and Gorakhpur intercepted at night,’ the Task Force Commander told the strike team leaders. ‘We will be giving the terrorists an unacceptably high chance of slipping away in the darkness.’

  ‘True, sir,’ one of them nodded in agreement. ‘There are also too many chances of collateral damage and innocents getting hurt.’

  ‘But what if they get off en route…for some reason or the other?’ the second one broke in.

  ‘Absolutely correct,’ the Task Force Commander said. ‘That’s why all railways stations en route, where the two trains halt, are being placed under a heavy security blanket and everyone getting off will be subjected to detailed scrutiny. I want you guys to meet the two trains at their final destinations. Your teams should be in place at least an hour before the trains reach. Try and take the buggers alive.’

  The team leaders nodded and headed out for the helicopters waiting to whisk them away to Gorakhpur and Bikaner. Then the Task Force Commander got on to the phone again and activated all the police stations on both the routes the trains were running on. It caused a lot of discomfort to a lot of security men and passengers, but it was nowhere near what lay in store for those present at Gorakhpur Railway Station at 0715 hours when the Sapt Kranti Express rolled in.

  0715 hours, 30 October 2005, Gorakhpur Railway Station.

  The bomber from the Shivaji Stadium Bus Terminus only realized that something was amiss when he failed to spot his team-mate at the platform. He got off the train and walked briskly to the prearranged spot near the exit gate where he waited for five minutes before he started getting uneasy. Not knowing what else to do, he decided to move out of the station and resume his journey. Perhaps it was this worry that preoccupied him because he failed to take note of the extra precautions being taken by the security men until he was almost at the gate.

  That is when, like his team-mate the previous evening at Shivaji Stadium, he made a fatal mistake. He tried to break out of the line at the exit gate and get back onto the platform. The anti-terrorist cop watching the gate from the flank spotted the sudden movement and immediately closed in on the man trying to break out of the queue. ‘Oye, you there! One second…’ the cop said gruffly as he placed a firm hand on the man’s shoulder. ‘Let us have a look at some identification.’

  The terrorist panicked; he tried to free himself, and pull out his weapon at the same time. The man had barely managed to get the pistol out when the cop hammered him hard on the temple with his rifle butt. The blow brought the terrorist to his knees. The pistol he had managed to free from his belt fired as the terrorist’s fingers clenched reflexively from the blow to his temple.

  The first bullet blew off the heel of a man walking past. The second slammed into the ankle of the lady just beside him. Suddenly there was chaos all around. Everyone tried to run at the same time. Luckily there was no third shot fired because by then the cop had slammed his rifle butt into the terrorist’s head again and the man had slumped down unconscious.

  ‘We’ve got the bugger!’ The team leader could not keep the pride out of his voice as he reported to the Task Force Commander.

  ‘Excellent work!’ The Task Force Commander complimented him. ‘Now just make sure you handle him with kid gloves. Check him out for suicide pills. No matter what happens I want him alive. Remember he is the first living proof of the strike that we have in our hands.’

  0845 hours, 30 October 2005, Bikaner Railway Station.

  The terrorist captured at Gorakhpur Railway Station was carted off to a small isolated room in the rear of the police station. He had just started to sing when the Bikaner Mail pulled into the Bikaner Railway Station at 0845 hours. It was delayed first because it started late from Delhi and second because it was halted just outside town for a few minutes to let through another train that was running even later.

  The place where the train halted for those few moments was about three hundred metres short of the railway station, adjacent to a small marketplace located on the road running parallel to the tracks. The market was a cluster of about fifty shops selling all kinds of odds and ends. It was just beginning to stir to life.

  It was during this halt that both the Lashkar men got off the train They got off not because they suspected anything. They did so simply because the halt was close to the market where they had to meet their conduit, Afzal. They had both seen the train slow down as it came up alongside the marketplace. Both recognized the market as the designated rendezvous point. They had seen it a few days earlier during the dry run. To them the aggravation of walking across the shit-streaked rail tracks was preferable to walking all the way around the station and then coming back to the market. The two men linked up near the tracks and walked across.

  That is why the cops manning the Bikaner Railway Station came back empty-handed. They did take seven young men into custody, but detailed interrogations proved each of them innocent. ‘They were not on the train,’ the Anti-Terrorism Cell Team leader told his boss in the Crisis Management Team.

  ‘You’re sure about that?’

  ‘Positive, sir. We detained everyone who could have even remotely been them,’ the cop assured him. ‘They either got off en route or never got on the train at all.’

  ‘OK, listen, we got the other guy
at Gorakhpur. He’s told us the whole story so we know where those two fuckers are headed and have an idea of how they plan to reach there. You get your boys back to Delhi. I’ll take care of it from here.’

  Then the Crisis Management Team got down to managing the crisis: ‘Those two will be linking up with someone called Afzal at Bikaner and then make the crossing to Fort Abbas.’

  ‘Hang on,’ the Army Liaison Officer flipped open the map of that area on his laptop. ‘In that case these are the logical jump-off points.’ He swivelled the laptop towards the cop and pointed at the area between Pugal and Anupgarh. Fort Abbas in Pakistan lay almost between them, directly to the north.

  The cop pondered it for a moment. ‘Right…that seems logical. That is where the hunt has to be concentrated.’ He mulled some more over the map. ‘It is a huge area to cover.’

  ‘You have no clue, pal,’ the Army LO laughed dryly. ‘I have served there…the terrain is bloody rugged. You can put a thousand men down in that area and still not see a soul.’

  ‘Shit!’ The cop looked disgruntled. ‘Anyway what has to be done has to be done. Let me speak to the DGP there and get things moving. What do you Army guys have available in that area?’

  ‘Let me find out.’ The Army LO reached for the nearest phone and dialled the Division Headquarters at Bikaner.

  ‘We need to move fast.’ The cop looked at the map again and did some mental calculations. ‘They can reach there in four to five hours if they have a vehicle available to them.’

  ‘Right! We assume they do have a vehicle, but I am sure we still have till tonight,’ the Army LO replied as he waited for the phone to be picked up at the other end. ‘They’re not stupid enough to try the border crossing by daylight.’

  Both tried to fight down the sense of urgency assailing them. They knew that in another few hours the two terrorists would be out of reach of the Indian authorities and would just become two more names on the list of people wanted for terrorist and criminal activities in India who were hiding in Pakistan.

  During his telecast to the nation the Indian Prime Minister did not talk about the terrorists who had been captured by the security forces. Thanks to the message left behind by Furkan on the tapes of Aaj Tak the world already knew who was responsible for the Delhi blasts. The tapes had been repeatedly played by the news channel and quoted relentlessly by the print media. None of the revelations came as any real surprise to anyone. Maulana Fazlur Rehman and his organization were already a designated terrorist organization and banned in almost every responsible nation in the world. Likewise, Brigadier Murad Salim and the ISI’s involvement in terrorist activity raised no eyebrows anywhere.

  Other than this, the Indian Government clamped down on all news. As decided by the Crisis Management Committee, all real-time information about the ongoing investigations was being kept strictly under wraps and no news regarding the case was being released to the press. It had been decided at the highest possible level that no information would be released till such time as the guilty had been dealt with.

  ‘No further comments, please,’ was the PRO’s constant refrain. ‘We have already released all the information we have.’

  ‘What about the shoot-out at Gorakhpur Railway Station this morning, sir?’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Did it have anything to do with the bomb blasts?’

  ‘To the best of my knowledge, it didn’t,’ the PRO handling the conference replied. He was being quite truthful too, since his knowledge was reasonably out-of- date and likely to remain so for quite some time; ‘What he doesn’t know he can’t let slip,’ is what the Crisis Management Committee had decreed.

  1150 hours, 30 October 2005, Indo–Pakistan Border, Rajasthan Sector.

  The first set of orders going out from Army Headquarters unleashed an avalanche of security forces along the Rajasthan border. The orders were simple and clear – the terrorists who had eluded the anti-terrorist team at Bikaner should not to be allowed to cross over to their safe haven in Pakistan.

  Even though the Indians had a clear idea of who they were looking for and where these men were headed, the desert was not an easy place to go looking for three men, specially in the Khajewala sector where the terrain was really rugged and scores of little-known, scarcely-marked trails crisscrossed the borders between India and Pakistan. Monitoring each one of them required massive resources not available under normal circumstances.

  Luckily for the Indians, at that time, one of their desert brigades was carrying out induction training in the area between Khajewala and Anupgarh. The Brigade was immediately diverted for this task.

  ‘Take them down or take them out,’ the Brigade Commander was told. ‘No matter what happens no one crosses that damn border. And listen,’ the GOC stressed, ‘ make damn sure that your boys keep things quiet and low-key. I don’t want those buggers getting spooked and hightailing it from there. We may not get another fix on them again.’

  ‘Three men. We are looking for three men heading for Fort Abbas. They are most likely to be using the Khajewala–Fort Abbas axis.’ That was the simple message that went out from the Brigade Major to all three units of the brigade. ‘Stop everyone and everything moving along the border and bring them in. The terrorists must not be allowed to get across.’

  Within hours, the Army and Border Security Force posts all along the international border had been placed on high alert and scores of patrols from the brigade under training were scouring the desert. An unseen array of battlefield surveillance radars lit up every inch of ground along the border between the border outposts. Senses were honed and gun sights gleamed darkly in the night.

  The two terrorists who had gotten lucky at Bikaner Railway Station had an early dinner with Afzal. Then as shadows lengthened and darkness overcame the light the three men set off for the Indo–Pakistan border. The three merchants of death were blissfully unaware of the ring of steel and fire that was coming into place between them and the ISI safe house at Fort Abbas in Pakistan towards which they were headed.

  Over seven thousand men with loaded guns and bristling bayonets eagerly sought the honour of bringing them down – dead or alive. Each one of them was aching to avenge those hundreds of innocents Delhi-ites who had fallen to the bombs of these subhuman bastards.

  2240 hours, 30 October 2005, Indo–Pakistan Border, Khajewala Sector, Rajasthan.

  As it turned out, the honour eventually went to the platoon commanded by the young Sikh Light Infantry officer who was patrolling the dunes directly to the north of Khajewala, covering the ancient smuggling routes between Khajewala in India and Fort Abbas in Pakistan.

  ‘Sir, No. 2 Section is reporting some movement,’ the patrol Second-in-Command informed him.

  ‘I’m on my way.’ No.2 Section was the one on the right flank. The Captain moved to it rapidly. ‘Show me,’ he said to the soldier manning the battlefield surveillance radar.

  A relatively new development of the Indian Defence Research and Development Organization, the all-weather-capable BFSR-SR Mark III man portable battlefield surveillance radar had been recently inducted into service by the Indian Armed Forces and other paramilitary organizations manning the border. It was a highly improved version of the radar that had been used by most Indian Army units till recently. The battery-powered radar weighed barely 22 kilograms and could be brought into action in less than four minutes. The radar had an inbuilt Global Position System to facilitate self-location, could track up to 50 targets simultaneously and classified targets based on the Audio Doppler signature. The portable colour PC display presented the viewer with an easy-to-read, high-resolution, coloured, north-oriented radar picture. User trials had confirmed that it could detect a crawling man 800 metres away, a walking man 2600 metres away, a group of men up to 6000 metres away and a vehicle or helicopter over 9000 metres away.

  The three men walking on the unmarked desert trail that night were precisely 2017 metres away when the radar picked them up with startling
clarity.

  The Captain tracked the movement of the three men for a few moments, got a fix on the direction they were moving in and then cross-checked it with his map. They were headed almost directly for the Pakistani BOP (Border Out Post) at Ranabhana along the international border. ‘Papa Six for Tiger One. I have three people moving just north of Temple Hill. They are moving on the old Sugar Four trail. Likely bearing indicates they are most probably heading towards Romeo Bravo. Over.’

  His battalion commander took a minute to make the mental placements on the battle board hung on the wall before him. He took note of Old Sugar (Smuggler) Trail Four. The winding trail led right past the border and crossed into Pakistan barely 300 metres to the east of Romeo Bravo (the Ranabhana BOP).

  ‘Tiger One for Papa Six. What’s your assessment?’

  ‘Tiger One, at this time and place? Can’t be anyone but smugglers or ANEs. May well be the ones we are looking for.’

  ‘Papa Six, I concur, but be careful…Make sure you keep the boys on a tight leash and there is no collateral damage.’

  ‘Roger that Tiger One.’

  ‘I want them alive. This is what I suggest you do…’ he rattled off concise orders concluding with, ‘Maintain radio contact. Papa Six Out.’

  The young Sikh Light Infantry Captain tossed the radio handset back to his radio operator and started forward purposefully towards the dune where his patrol headquarters was deployed. A large whack of adrenaline thumped into his system and his mind slammed into overdrive.

  The Sikh Light Infantry finds its origins in the Sikh Pioneers raised by the British in 1857. The Pioneers were disbanded in 1933 but revived as the Sikh Light Infantry during the Second World War. It was on the Burmese front that they first tasted blood and won their first battle honours. Known as redoubtable fighting men the Sikh Light Infantry occupies a special place of honour in the Indian Army for courage, resource and ingenuity. They are ferocious warriors who require minimal orders and direction.