Pahalgam and 26/11: Differences in India's response
Pahalgam reminded me of another even more terrifying incident that engulfed Mumbai on 26/11/ 2008. I was directly involved in the operations following this horrific episode, as I was then the Cabinet Secretary.
On a languid Wednesday evening in 2008, I had returned early from the office. Around six in the evening, I received my first call from M L Kumawat, then Special Secretary in the Ministry of Home Affairs. By a strange coincidence, Home Secretary Madhukar Gupta was away in Pakistan for a meeting. Kumawat told me trouble had started in Mumbai. I rang up the Chief Secretary, Johny Joseph. His initial thought was that a terrorist incident, similar to the string of terror attacks that rocked many Indian cities in the nineties and the first decade of this century, had struck Mumbai once again.
That this was a terrorist attack became clear when the ten terrorists in Mumbai continued to play their dance of death across multiple locations. The Chief Secretary sought the help of marine commandos, and the naval chief, Adm Suresh Mehta, was happy to oblige.
Close to midnight, the Chief Secretary telephoned me and formally sought the help of the National Security Guard. In law and order matters, the Centre can act only at the request of the State Government. I spoke to J K Dutt, the Director General, immediately. He was ready to move, but as his force was located in Manesar, it took time to bring them to the airport, commandeer an aircraft and fly them to Mumbai.
It took the NSG a little more than two days to flush out and exterminate all the terrorist vermin, except Kasab, who had been captured after he killed scores of innocent people in the Chhatrapati Shivaji railway terminus. Kasab lived for nearly four years thereafter in Mumbai prisons as judicial processes wore on.
The task of the NSG was rendered far more difficult by an irresponsible media that filmed and described all their operations over the national networks, providing information from minute to minute to the handlers of the terrorists in Pakistan.
While no judicial or official inquiry into the events of 26/11 was ordered at the Central level, a great deal was done to strengthen our defences and intelligence systems along the coast. In this task, executed by a Committee headed by the Cabinet Secretary, the State governments were fully involved, and the Navy, the Coast Guard and the State marine police set up a coordinated network. Commodore Srikant Kesnur wrote in a daily in October 2019, 'We can confidently say that our Maritime Domain Awareness is of a very high order; higher than it has ever been. Structures have been created to enhance 'jointness' among military, law and order, and intelligence agencies.'
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