Terrorists indicated they would talk but there was no negotiator

The first indication that the Lashkar men were considering taking hostages and making demands became available in a phone conversation between the terrorists in the Taj Mahal Hotel and their handlers in Pakistan. According to transcripts of the conversation accessed by The Indian Express,the call was made at 3.10 am on November 27,less than six hours after the four attackers had stormed the hotel and occupied the heritage wing:

Receiver: Greetings!

Caller: Greetings! There are three ministers and one secretary of the cabinet in your hotel. We don8217;t know in which room.

Receiver: Oh! That is good news! It is the icing on the cake.

Caller: Find those 3-4 persons and then get whatever you want from India.

Receiver: Pray that we find them.

The second time around,it was more than just an indication. In fact,supporters of the Chabad-Lubavitch sect in the US,whose Chabad House Nariman House had been attacked and seized by two Lashkar gunmen,even initiated a process of getting in touch with the attackers who were holed inside the five-storey building in Colaba.

Calls were made to the terrorists and an attempt was on to rope in a Mumbai Police official to pursue talks with them. But in the absence of a clear strategy to engage them and half-hearted measures to string up the technology needed to make a conference call,the attempt fell through.

Here is what happened on the morning of November 27,about 12 hours after Babar Imran and Nasir had raided the nondescript building in a Colaba lane. Rabbi Levi Shemtov,a Chabad emissary in Washington,called the mobile phone of Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg,who ran Nariman House,but ended up getting someone who spoke in a language he did not understand. It was one of the terrorists speaking in Urdu.

Chabad-Lubavitch followers in Washington and New York searched for a Urdu-Hindi speaker they could depend upon and found P V Viswanath,who taught at Pace University in New York,and was willing to act as the interpreter between Shemtov and the terrorists in Nariman House.

The first conference call between Shemtov,Viswanath and Imran took place at 10.30 am and the first thing Viswanath asked the Lashkar man was if the hostages were safe. 8220;Humne unko thappad bhi nahin mara hai,8221; We haven8217;t even slapped them was the reply. There were a total of five such calls with the Chabad representatives seeking to find out how the hostages were doing,if they needed food and generally sought to keep the Lashkar men engaged in a conversation.

But the most important conversation took place rather early in the day. Ajmal Amir Kasab,one of the 10 attackers,had been captured the previous night by Mumbai Police and by the morning,word about it was already out and even Imran and Nasir knew about it although they didn8217;t know who among their mates it was. 8220;Hum Bharat sarkar se baat karna chahate hain. Hamara ek banda aapke kabze mein hai,hamare saamne use pesh kar do We want to speak to the Indian government,one of our men is in your custody,bring him before us,8221; they told Viswanath.

The Chabad representatives in Washington got in touch with the Indian embassy in the US capital and that set the wheels of the bureaucracy in motion with calls going through to New Delhi and then to Mumbai,before Mumbai Police Assistant Commissioner Isaq Bagwan,who could speak English and Hindi,was nudged to try and join the next conference call. His task: to talk to Imran and Nasir and see if they were 8220;willing to surrender8221;.

Bagwan told The Indian Express that he was given a number,9819464530,and told to talk to the terrorist there. 8220;I tried the number and for the first half hour it was engaged. Later the phone started ringing but it was never picked up,8221; he said. Bagwan tried the number for a hour and a half with no luck. The building was stormed the next day by NSG commandos and the two terrorists killed but the six hostages had also been eliminated by then.

Yet another opportunity apparently came again on the morning of November 27 from the Trident-Oberoi hotels which were being held by Abdul Rehman Chhota and Fahadullah. The two are believed to have called a Hindi news channel and discussed their demands on air but no attempt was made by security agencies to pursue that call even though doubts were subsequently raised about its authenticity.

The NSG also felt the need for men who could communicate with the terrorists when they were within the earshot of its commandos during encounters in the Taj and The Oberoi. As then NSG chief J K Dutt told The Indian Express Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta during an interview for NDTV8217;s Walk The Talk programme,on two or three occasions the commandos told the terrorists that they had no chance of getting out of the place alive and that they better surrender,so at least their lives would be saved.

But the terrorists would reply with a string of abuses and start shooting. Not trained to handle such a response,the NSG obviously saw no reason in trying to engage them in a negotiation.

All these instances came for much discussion during post-26/11 security debriefings in New Delhi with experts,including those from the NSG,saying they sorely missed official hostage negotiators even if it was just meant to buy time. The sessions involved then Southern Area Army Commander now Vice-Chief of the Army Lt Gen Noble Thamburaj and Dutt and the common thread in these debriefings was that the government should have appointed a negotiator for the terrorists inside the Taj,The Oberoi and Nariman House to buy time for the hostages.

While Maharashtra DGP Roy8217;s public rejection of negotiations was considered unfortunate,it was also pointed out that Roy did not have any instructions to say to the contrary. The only telephone number given by the Intelligence Bureau to Mumbai police was the Callphonex platform no 1 201 253 18211,which was in touch with the terrorists at the Taj at 1.00 am on November 27. As the terrorists there were on a killing spree and had shown no intentions to negotiate,the state police chief thought that it was wise to speak up.

On the other hand,the Israeli Ambassador to India,Mark Sofer,and his defence attaché are learnt to have called on senior government officials8217; post-26/11,and expressed satisfaction over the conduct of operations but are said to have suggested that a government negotiator would have helped save lives. Even General Thamburaj,who was in Mumbai through the operations with Army troops guarding the periphery,conveyed to the Defence Ministry that while the counter-terror operations went off well,a negotiator would have helped the case. The NSG thought so too.

And there were official negotiators in Mumbai,both of them outside The Oberoi-Trident hotels on the night of November 26 itself. The two officers,Joint Commissioner of Police Law and Order K L Prasad and Joint Commissioner of Police Traffic Sanjay Barve,were sent by the state police to the US in 2002 to be trained to tackle hostage situations and negotiate with gunmen. But obviously,no one had a brief either from the state government or the Centre to negotiate,with the Nariman House attempt being a poorly planned exception.