India's intelligence services 'failed to act on warnings of attacks'

India's intelligence services 'failed to act on warnings of attacks'
India's intelligence service failed to act on intercepted phone conversations that an attack on Mumbai was imminent and the subsequent response to the terrorist strikes was "amateur", security experts have claimed.

By Rahul Bedi in Mumbai
Last Updated: 11:02PM GMT 30 Nov 2008

Previous1 of 5 ImagesNext
Security services survey a destroyed room inside Photo: GETTY
Indian officials have declared the siege at the hotel over Photo: GETTY
A National Security Guard commando shows victory sign Photo: AP
Many of the rooms in the hotel are burnt out Photo: AP
Details emerged yesterday of intelligence failures and delays in deploying National Security Guard (NSG) military commandos to confront the Mumbai attackers.

The 10 terrorists, who Indian officials have said are from Islamist militants from Pakistan, snuck into the western port city of Mumbai by boat on Wednesday night and then besieged two hotels and a Jewish centre, killing 183 people, including 22 foreigners.

Official sources said the gunmen, armed with assault rifles and grenades, began their co-ordinated killing spree around 9.30pm on Wednesday, but Mumbai police initially passed it off as a "gang war" between city crime syndicates.

By the time the seriousness of the attack became clear, and the home affairs minister Shivraj Patil – who has since resigned – ordered the NSG, which is based at Manesar, outside New Delhi, to deploy, it was around 11pm.

But the Russian IL 76 military transport aircraft that was to ferry the 200 commandos was stationed at Chandigarh, 152 miles north of Delhi, and by the time it arrived in the capital it was already nearing 2am.

The slow-moving aircraft finally landed at Mumbai three hours later, but precious time had been lost conceding the tactical edge to the militants. By the time the NSG commandos clambered onto lumbering busses at Mumbai's airport and arrived at the respective trouble spots, it was 7am, nearly 10 hours after the terrorist strikes started.

Firmly settled in their highly advantageous defensive positions, the terrorists were then well placed to carry out their 60-hour-long see-saw battle with the commandos.

"This is no way to fight terrorism. It is an amateurish, sluggish and feeble response" security expert Ajay Sahni of the Institute of Confilct Resolution in New Delhi said.

"The NSG's poor reaction time to the emergency situation was due entirely to vacillation by the civilian bureaucracy" former Major General Sheru Thapliyal said. A national security crisis of this nature needs better handling, he added.

The Indian Navy and Coast Guard also appear to have displayed criminal negligence, officials conceded.

They failed in detecting the hijacked fishing trawler in which the terrorists travelled to Mumbai despite alerts by the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), the country's overseas intelligence gathering agency, that an attack via the Arabian Sea was imminent.

On November 19 the RAW intercepted a telephone conversation between the southern Pakistani port city of Karachi and someone in Mumbai that talked of "sending cargo" to the city.

After collating other information, they informed the navy and coast guard that Pakistan-based terrorists from the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) group aboard a trawler would approach India's west coast to launch a major strike.

And while Nov 26 was not directly mentioned, an earlier date was specified.

The interception of another conversation, also from Karachi to Mumbai, on Nov 18 in which one person said "see you" at a later date was dismissed as "routine" and of little relevance by the navy that claimed to be "swamped" and "overloaded by such "useless" information.

The five-day naval manoeuvres to intercept the trawler that also involved local port officials and coastal village councils were abandoned on Nov 22 as officials were unable to detect the hijacked vessel in which the gunmen eventually sailed to Mumbai, even though it was highly conspicuous as it regularly strayed away from the fishing fleet.

Investigators said the terrorists left Karachi around mid-November aboard the Al Hussaini merchant ship before dragooning a trawler, named Kuber, in mid-sea, killing three of its four-man crew. With the help of its "tandel", or skipper, they then made their way to within 5 miles of the Mumbai coastline.

Before abandoning the vessel, they beheaded the skipper and transferring to two fibreglass dinghies, they made their way to Mumbai's Sassoon docks and the Cuffe Parade promenade near the Taj and Triden Oberoi Hotels and the Jewish centre.

The Kuber and two dinghies have been seized by Indian authorities, along with a satellite telephone, a GPS navigator and a detailed map of south Mumbai, the area of the terrorists' lethal operations.

The RAW advisory was also sent to Mumbai police, who interpreted it as a customary warning similar to the countless numbers they had received over the years.

"Such self-serving advisories on terrorist attacks are periodically sent out by the security agencies to accomplish two objectives," a senior intelligence official privately admitted.

"If the terrorist strike does not materialise, the local authorities take credit for having averted or defused it.

"And, if it did, the security agencies claim they had predicted it all along, thereby saving face.

"It's the perfect bureaucratic solution to the terrorist threat until something like in Mumbai's case goes tragically wrong" the official added.