Mumbai under siege: A massive intelligence failure

At the time of going to press, the CCS was on and was to be followed up by a meeting of the full Cabinet.

Top Government sources said that the Prime Minister’s concern was shared by Congress President Sonia Gandhi over the failure of the Intelligence agencies to either predict or prevent the attack.

Apart from the conjectures, the internal security establishment has little idea of the group behind the massacre and the conspiracy behind it except that it reveals a Lashkar-e-Toiba stamp with certain similarities to the 2001 Parliament attack. It appears that the terrorists used Argees grenades and AK-47 rifles, which are signature weapons of pan-Islamic jehadi groups.

While preparations are on at the Raisina Hill to prepare for the Cabinet meeting, the heat is on both Home Minister Shivraj Patil and M.K. Narayanan, known loyalists of the Nehru-Gandhi family. The Cabinet meeting is expected to be a heated affair.

While the Cabinet will condole the death of ATS chief Hemant Karkare and other policemen who made the supreme sacrifice, the allies will put pressure on the PM to get his internal security house in order.

Although Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister R.R. Patil has gone on record saying that they had received no intelligence inputs from Gujarat, Ahmedabad, on the contrary, says that specific inputs about Mumbai being on the terrorists’ radar were given on the basis of interrogation of the Mumbai module linked with those involved in the July 26 Ahmedabad blasts.