Part IV: The vain search for ‘LeT vessel’ before 26/11

Ref : rediff.com
March 19, 2009
How the terrorists landed
Terror’s Trail
It was around 10.30 pm when the inspector general of Indian Coast Guard, Western region, Rajendra Singh — in charge of the coastal security of 3,473 km of coastal belt along the western coast of India: a total area of 9,3,000 sq km of Arabian Sea extending from Koteshwar in Gujarat to Mattam Point in Kerala up to the International Maritime Boundary Line (IMBL, an imaginary boundary separating Indian waters from Pakistani waters) — received a phone call from the Operations Room Centre of the Coast Guard in Mumbai. ‘Sir, there appears to be a coordinated terror attack in Mumbai; the Taj hotel, the Oberoi hotel, the CST station and a place called Chabad House in Colaba have been attacked by armed terrorists.’ Singh, who had just come back to his small room in Mayur Vihar, Delhi, from a routine departmental meeting at the Coast Guard Headquarters in the capital, was packing his bags to fly back the next morning to Mumbai — the official base of the Western region.
Singh immediately turned on the television set. Hysterical anchors and reporters across different channels were giving sketchy, varying facts of the unfolding terror attack. ‘More than twenty terrorists have stormed the city.’ ‘The Taj, the Oberoi and the CST have been attacked.’ ‘Few bomb explosions have occurred across Mumbai.’ ‘The terrorists are setting the Taj on fire.’ ‘Nine terrorists have been reportedly arrested by the police.’ ‘Terrorists had checked into the Taj and the Oberoi days in advance and had stored explosives in hotel rooms for the impending terror attack.’ Singh, bewildered and shocked, remained glued to the TV as horrifying, fleeting images of burning hotel rooms and sounds of grenade explosions kept beaming on news channels.
Hundreds of miles away from the Mayur Vihar apartment in Delhi where Singh was staring at the TV, Bharat Dattatraya Tamore, fifty-eight, was sitting at a small, rickety desk in a badly lit, grimy police station at Cuffe Parade in Mumbai. Tamore had been staying at a fishermen colony — a cluster of flat-roofed, matchbox styled houses in the squalor of an urban slum along the seashore — at Cuffe Parade in South Mumbai since his birth. It was something that Tamore had seen that very evening at around 8.20 pm that necessitated his presence at the police station. Not far from the Taj President — another five-star property of the Taj Group in Mumbai — he had seen eight, maybe ten (it was dark and the occasion did not present a chance for a head count), strongly built, smartly dressed youth emerge out of the dark sea at the fishermen colony. The scene was odd enough for Tamore to register it; faces grimy and hair sticky from days without a bath, the youth made their way hurriedly with bulky rucksacks on their backs and additional bags in their hands.
‘What else did you see?’ asked Assistant Police Inspector Vilas Bhole, taking down notes on a white sheet of paper. ‘They came in an inflated speedboat. Came right up to the shore, by the rocks and then got off the boat and walked towards the main road. They split up in groups of twos, each group went away separately, in different directions,’ replied Tamore. Ironically, the men Tamore had seen were headed to wreak carnage at the Taj hotel, Tamore’s workplace for the last thirty years, where he was employed as a steward. As Tamore sat narrating his eyewitness account to API Bhole, a few feet from him, his neighbour Bharat Kashinath Tandel, fifty-two, resident of kholi number 18 in the fishermen colony, was sitting across Sub-Inspector Anil Kamble.
Tandel had his own story to tell which was similar to Tamore’s except for one additional, important detail. Tandel had sensed that they were not from Mumbai, their rubber speedboat was not like those used by the fishermen in the area, the anxiety on their faces making them all the more suspect. A curious and suspicious Tandel asked the men who they were and where they were headed. To this, one of them replied: ‘Hum pehle se hi tang hain. Hume pareshaan mat karo. (We are already quite stressed. Don’t pester us.)’ Tandel and Tamore were alone at the time these men came to the shore. ‘Normally, at that time of the evening, the place is buzzing with people. But this evening because of the day-night cricket match between India and England most of the men were inside their houses, watching the match on TV. If there were more people around we would definitely have had an altercation with them,’ said Tandel.
Luck was on the terrorists’ side
Not just the cricket match, it seemed that everything went the way of those ten men who came in the speedboat. That evening because of the high tide, seawater had come right up to the rocks, just 60-70 metres off the main road. Had it been low tide the water would have ended 150 to 200 metres away from the rocks, leaving in between a thick and slippery muddy stretch, one foot deep and difficult to manoeuvre. But the elements made everything a breeze and the strangers hauled their heavy bags off the boat and approached the road unhindered — luck was on their side.
Tandel observed, ‘The way they anchored their boat, the loop of the rope was different from the one tied by us fishermen.’ Unfortunately, despite the peculiarities Tandel and Tamore had spotted, they did not inform the police. Both went back to their houses and like the others sat down to enjoy the cricket match. Only after news of the terrorist attack broke out on TV, did Tandel inform a police van patrolling the area. Police Inspector P N Jagtap, Sub-Inspector Anil Kamble and Sub-Inspector Rajendra Kamble, all attached to the Cuffe Parade police station, reached the spot.
With the help of the fishermen the cops retrieved the speedboat from the water, which had got unhinged and was drifting more than 200 feet away from the shore, and a bomb disposal squad soon arrived and rummaged the boat in search of explosives. Though no explosives or arms or ammunition were recovered from the boat, an assortment of seemingly harmless articles, which would soon form crucial material evidence, was recovered from the boat: eight yellow life jackets manufactured in China, an off-white drum of twenty-five litres capacity containing approximately twelve litres of diesel, some tools in a polythene bag, a yellow coloured tube of adhesive manufactured in Pakistan for fixing punctures, two eight-foot-long rowing sticks with a one-and-a-half-foot-wide patta. The boat had a Yamaha engine, and had been painted yellow, the colour recently applied — as investigation would later reveal — to make the boat look old. There were three valves on either side of the boat which the cops unscrewed to deflate it and then hauled it to the Cuffe Parade police station on a handcart.
The news of the recovery of an abandoned speedboat soon spread like fire. ‘The terrorists had come by sea. An abandoned speedboat has been found drifting in the waters near Badhwar Park at Cuffe Parade’: the bold words flitted across TV screens. In a flash, Singh’s — still glued to the TV — status changed: from a horrified, concerned spectator he became a central character in the bloody terror attack. Exactly six days ago, on 20 November, at around 4 pm, Singh’s office, situated in a three-storey complex at Worli sea face in Mumbai, had received a fax: ‘Intelligence indicates suspected LeT vessel sighted in position 24 DEG 16 MIN North and 67 DEG 2 MIN East attempting to infiltrate through sea route. Request: 1) Direct ship in area to exchange surveillance. Launch Dorniers at first light for sea-air coordinated search; 2) Deploy ACV IB to patrol off-creek area.’ The fax was sent by principal director (operations), Coast Guard Headquarters, Delhi, who in turn had received this particular intelligence from the IB.
Singh had immediately called up Deputy Inspector General T K S Chandra, the commander of Coast Guard District Headquarters of Gujarat, whose office is at Porbandar, and instructed him to launch a hunt for a suspicious Pakistani vessel which could make a bid to enter the Indian waters. DIG Chandra in turn alerted the three Coast Guard substations under his jurisdiction — Jakhau, Vadinar and Okha, all in Gujarat — and told them to launch their vessels into the waters along the IMBL and search for the suspected ‘LeT vessel’. One interceptor boat each from Jakhau and Vadinar, two hovercrafts and one fast patrol vessel from Okha immediately sailed towards the IMBL.
At the time, two joint military exercises — Defence of Gujarat (DGX and Tatraksha XXIV being carried out by the Indian Navy, Coast Guard, Border Security Force (BSF), the Indian Army and the respective ports between 18 and 22 November — were underway in which a total of six vessels of the Coast Guard were participating. After receiving the IB input Singh pulled out all the six vessels that were intended for the military exercise and moved them towards the IMBL. All in all, one offshore patrol vessel with an integrated helicopter (a vessel with a sustenance of twelve to fourteen days in the outer sea without any external help), one inshore patrol craft (sustenance of four to five days), two fast patrol crafts, one air cushion vehicle (hovercraft), two interceptor boats and two Dorniers were asked to patrol the Indian waters from Diu and head to Porbandar to Okha to Kandla to Jakhau across the IMBL. (The Western region of the Indian Coast Guard has a total of fourteen ships, eight Dornier aircraft, six helicopters, two advance light helicopters, ten interceptor boats and two hovercrafts to patrol the 9,73,000 sq km of Indian waters across the states of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala and the Union territories of Daman and Diu and Lakshwadeep.)
The vain search for an ‘LeT vessel’
But after two days of intense patrolling the Coast Guard failed to find any suspicious vessel, leave alone a Pakistani ship. On 22 November, Singh wrote back to its Delhi-based headquarters asking the principal director (operations) for a more specific, actionable intelligence like the colour or size of the vessel, the name or the kind of vessel, and if possible, some coordinates. The Coast Guard headquarters in turn wrote to the IB asking for specifics on the vessel. But the IB had nothing more to add to its first communique. On 23 November, the Coast Guard again wrote to the IB asking for ’specific, actionable intelligence’, and the latter communicated back saying that if there was any more intelligence on the matter, the same would be conveyed to them.
The first, and in this matter also the last, location of the suspected LeT vessel — as tracked and reported by the IB — was 22 nautical miles (50 km) outside Karachi in the outer anchorage area which was way inside the Pakistani waters. The Indian Coast Guard can only intercept or board a vessel once it crosses the IMBL. However, from 21 to 26 November, boarding parties of Meera Behn (fast patrol vessel), Amrit Kaur (fast patrol vessel), Vijaya (offshore patrol vessel), and one inshore patrol craft boarded and inspected 276 Indian fishing vessels plying in the Indian waters. But all the 276 fishing boats which were boarded and checked by Coast Guard patrolling parties were clean; the sailors on board were bona fide Indian fishermen. At any given time there are 60,000 registered Indian fishing boats in the Arabian Sea, of which roughly 10,000 fishing boats are in the waters around the IMBL. The 276 Indian fishing boats searched between 21 and 26 November were all sailing close to the IMBL. On the night of 26 November, when the terrorists finally disembarked off a speedboat at Cuffe Parade in Mumbai, six Coast Guard vessels and two Dorniers were patrolling the Indian waters along the IMBL.
Through the night Singh made several calls to his commanding officers wanting to know how the terrorists had sneaked in by the sea (by now it was quite clear that the speedboat recovered from the fishermen colony belonged to the terrorists) and managed to give the Coast Guard patrolling vessels the slip. The terrorists could not have travelled by the speedboat in the high seas and must have definitely been dropped a few miles off the Mumbai coast by some bigger vessel. So, did the suspected LeT vessel the IB had first tipped them about sailed all the way to Mumbai and then lowered the terrorists in a small speedboat? Or did the terrorists sail to Mumbai in some merchant vessel and then got on to the dinghy? The Indian intelligence and investigating agencies were groping in the dark, looking for answers. And these baffling questions kept haunting Singh through the night. DG Coast Guard, Delhi, wanted to know if it was possible for any Pakistani vessel to enter the Indian waters despite the high alert. Singh on his part was assured that he and his team had not left any stone unturned since the IB alert, and for any Pakistani vessel to enter the Indian waters was simply not possible.
The next morning he took an Indian Airlines flight and landed in Mumbai at 9.45 am Singh drove straight to his Worli office; the roads were deserted and an otherwise one-and-a-half-hour journey from Santacruz airport to Worli was completed in twenty minutes. At around 12.30 pm the commanding station officer (operations) of Coast Guard at Worli received a call from the Western Command of the Navy asking him to intercept a merchant vessel called MV-Alpha which was headed towards Gujarat. The Indian Navy suspected that the terrorists had used this vessel to cross into Indian waters. Singh immediately alerted one of its vessels called Samar, which after three hours of hot pursuit intercepted the said merchant ship that had twelve Ukrainian crew members on board. After eight hours of rummaging, the Coast Guard cleared the ship of suspicion — it was headed to Alang port for shipwrecking.
What the Coast Guard found on the Kuber
Then at around 2.10 pm, Singh received a phone call from the office of joint commissioner (crime) of Mumbai police, Rakesh Maria. Singh was informed that Kasab’s — the lone terrorist who was captured alive — police interrogation had revealed that the terrorists had sailed to Mumbai in a brown-coloured Indian fishing boat with a wooden finish and it was abandoned 4-5 nautical miles off the Mumbai coast after which the terrorists got into a speedboat.
Maria who was still in the middle of interrogating Kasab told Singh that the terrorist had confessed to having killed the sailor on board and his body was lying in the engine room. Maria asked for the Coast Guard’s help in tracking down the vessel. Singh called up the commanding officer of Coast Guard Air Squadron 842 at the Navy base Kunjali at Colaba and told him to immediately fly two helicopters over the coast of Mumbai and see if there was any suspicious Indian fishing boat drifting in the waters. Simultaneously, a Dornier which was doing a sortie close by was also told to look for this suspicious Indian fishing trawler going up north. Within twenty minutes Singh was informed by his officers aboard the two helicopters that they could see an Indian fishing trawler drifting 5 nautical miles south off Prongs Lighthouse, in the outer anchorage of Mumbai harbour. From the helicopter, no one was visible on the boat.
At 2.40 pm Singh called up Maria’s office and told him about the discovery of a suspicious boat. Maria now asked Singh to ask his men to board the boat and see if there was a satellite phone and a GPS also lying in the boat. Two Coast Guard personnel were dropped from the helicopter on to the boat who on entering the engine room found a semi-decomposed body with hands tied at the back and throat slit from ear to ear. They also saw a dark black Thuraya satellite phone and a GPS with ‘Garmin’ and ‘GPS 12 MAP’ written on either side of the screen. At this time a Coast Guard ship called Sankalp, an advanced offshore vessel, was entering the Mumbai harbour after three days of sailing. Singh told Sankalp, with eighty-five Coast Guard personnel on board, to sail towards the abandoned boat. In the meantime, the two Coast Guard helicopters kept hovering over the boat, ensuring it did not drift out of their sight. By 6 pm a team of six sailors, headed by Deputy Commandant Vijay, boarded the boat and recovered a satellite phone and a GPS that were left behind by the terrorists. The deputy commandant retrieved four wave points that indicated the sea route taken by the vessel. The first wave point was 32 nautical miles into Pakistani waters from the IMBL, the second wave point was west of Porbandar, the third wave point was south-west of Diu and the fourth wave point was 10 miles west of Bombay harbour — the point where the terrorists had abandoned the boat and lowered their speedboat.
The Coast Guard now had before them the exact route the terrorists had taken to sail to Mumbai. And it showed that they had got into the Indian fishing boat 32 nautical miles into Pakistani waters from IMBL. That is, the mother vessel carrying the terrorists never entered the Indian waters, giving the Coast Guard no chance to intercept them. Instead, the Indian fishing boat went deep inside Pakistani waters and was probably hijacked there. The Coast Guard found an assortment of items on the vessel: fifteen blankets; the same number of winter jackets and toothbrushes; two engine covers; a raft case on the trawler; a ‘Sogo’ spray paint; a few empty packets of fifty rounds of bullets for .34 bore gun with a ‘Made in China’ label; a nylon rope; an empty diesel plastic can of a petrol filling station with a head office address of HO No. 8, Industrial Area, Karachi; a white coloured packet of tissue papers branded ‘Tissue The Senses’ produced by Zik Brothers, Karachi; a 10 kg packet of wheat flour from a Karachi shop called Qamar Food Products, Plot No 3/3, Raita Plot, Shah Faisal Town; a packet of Pakistan-made pickle; a matchbox made in Pakistan; a floor cleaning brush; a two-litre Mountain Dew bottle; two detergent boxes branded PAK — All Purpose Detergent, manufactured in Pakistan; a white 50 kg gunny bag with ‘Pakistan White Refined Sugar, Crop Year: 2007-2008, Expiry Date: December 2009, Net Weight 50.00 KG’ embossed on it; a tube of ‘Touch Me’ shaving cream manufactured in Pakistan; ‘Medicam’ dental gel made in Pakistan; eight razors of Gillette brand; eight pencil cell batteries of Duracell; black quarter pants labelled South-O-Pole, Made in Pakistan; two packets of Nestle milk with marking of Nestle Pakistan Limited; a few black and white namaz scarves with the label ‘Cashmilan Best Qlty, Phone 0614516729′; a few packets of fairness cream; three handcuffs with steel chains and a metal plate with picture of a gun with instructions in Urdu.
These items, which would become a crucial part of the material evidence of Pakistan’s involvement in the carnage, made it clear that all the ten terrorists had sailed from Pakistan with supplies of Pakistani origin. The papers onboard the boat showed that it was registered in the name of Kuber with the Gujarat fisheries department with the registration number PBR 2342. The maximum speed of Kuber, which had just one engine, was 8 nautical miles per hour. It requires special skills to ride a fishing trawler and with much difficulty the Coast Guard sailors, who are trained in driving hi-tech marine vessels, drove Kuber to Sassoon docks at Colaba — it took them three hours to cover a distance of 5 nautical miles. At 9.30 pm on 27 November, the Indian Coast Guard handed over Kuber to the Mumbai police.