The 7/11 terrorists lived next door to me

The really important question is this, and it should be asked of India TV. Why didn’t it get Rahul Mahajan to address the nation after the Mumbai blasts?

The men behind 7/11 were tenants in the quiet South Delhi locality I live in. Frequent travelers, the four men flew to Mumbai a fortnight back. That was the last we, the unsuspecting neighbours, saw of them. It appears now they were actually members of that frightening club—a terrorist cell aka a sleeper module—and the South Delhi address was just a red herring. They had planned the attack with a precision the local Residents’ Welfare Association would have loved to see in Delhi Jal Board employees tasked with fixing dysfunctional ferrules. The men—the terrorists and not, I hasten to add, the DJB employees—are/were in Pakistan/Nepal/Bangladesh/Iran. This is an exclusive brought to you by this column and courtesy briefings from my high level sources in Intelligence agencies/home ministry/Mumbai Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS). They spoke to me on the condition that I did not ask them anything about the man in burqa at the Mumbai airport who was on every TV news channel Friday morning.

In the best traditions of journalism, I offer this version of the real story of the Mumbai blasts to add to Times Now’s, CNN-IBN’s, NDTV’s and India TV’s (I stopped watching Aaj Tak’s Mumbai coverage after it put six reporters on air simultaneously; it was too intimidating).

Times Now told me that Jabi, Fazal, Batkal and Riaz spent three to six months “meticulously planning” the operation that started when the bombs were assembled at a place “30 minutes away” from the Churchgate station. CNN-IBN told me the attacks were “well-planned and well-executed” and the plot was hatched in Kathmandu. Fayaz, Zabiuddin, Aslam and Junaid were the key operatives. NDTV had Zabiuddin and Fayaz in common with CNN-IBN. Kathmandu was referred to as well. I admit I panicked that I was going to hear the same version of the real story from two different channels. But NDTV had Kashmiri Rana and Javed as the two other players. India TV had gone beyond the Fayazes and the Aslams. An ATS team is leaving for London, the anchor said, we have exclusive information the team is ready to go, we know the team is about to leave. Cut to the correspondent: We have firm indications the team is about to depart for London, we know they are ready but I can’t say exactly when they will leave because my source has switched his phone off.

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That was a terrible thing to do on the part of India TV’s source. Because with the evening’s exclusives over, viewers had time to ask questions. Questions like should reporters go on air with everything cops and spooks tell them? Or, why don’t journalists instead ask how come cops and spooks can never catch the Fayazes and the Riazes before they strike but can tell us within hours of the incident what they had been up to?

But the really important question is this, and it should be asked of India TV. Why didn’t it get Rahul Mahajan to address the nation after the Mumbai blasts?

India TV took us to Rahul’s engagement and asked him on behalf of the nation what message he had for us. We wondered along with India TV how sublimely significant it was that the privations of Lord Ram and Rahul during their respective exiles were so similar. So, why did we miss out on Rahul’s thoughts when the country needed solace? Where was Rahul Mahajan at the time of a national crisis?

If you asked five different news channels, you would have got five different answers.