Car had red light but no escort: alert policemen saw the red flag

At 3.45 am, the special squad was on a routine patrol when they noticed a white Ambassador car entering the Mahal area from adjoining Gandhibagh. But the patrol realised something was wrong: cars with red lights usually have escort vehicles but this one had none.

Moving in a Tata Sumo and a Toyota Qualis, the policemen stuck to the drill. They followed the car, saw it turn to a road running 200 metres behind the Sangh headquarters. But the Ambassador suddenly disappeared. At 4 am, they spotted the car again, this time entering a lane that leads to the RSS headquarters from the northern side. It was then that the squad closed in. Near the barricade, barely 100 metres from the Sangh building, they shouted at the driver to stop. Only to be attacked. The policemen returned fire.

The squad—PSIs A P Saraf, Rajendra Tiwari, and J A More, and constables Prithviraj Singh, Mithilesh Tripathi, Kuldeep, Vijay and Ganesh—had been drawn from various police stations in the city. PSI Tiwari had worked in Naxal-infested Gadchiroli and was trained for firefights. It was he who first called out to the militants. The other policemen also reacted quickly, alerting policemen posted outside the Sangh building. What this did was trap the militants between two groups of policemen.