It took the local administration some time to fathom whether the attacks on Wednesday night were a terrorist strike or a resurgence of the gang wars that once ravaged Mumbai.
MUMBAI/ NEW DELHI: It took the local administration some time to fathom whether the attacks on Wednesday night were a terrorist strike or a resurgence of the gang wars that once ravaged Mumbai.
As the terrorists went on a killing spree, firing indiscriminately and hurling grenades at several places in the city, state home minister RR Patil rushed to director-general of police Anami Roy’s office to understand the situation. Patil was accompanied by state ministers Chhagan Bhujbal and Vijaysinh Mohite Patil.
With chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh away in Kerala for a public-relations exercise, chief secretary Johny Joseph took charge in the control room at the state secretariat with some bureaucrats, frantically reaching out to the Centre for help.
Police commissioner Hassan Gafoor was drawing up his own strategies to counter the crisis along with anti-terrorism squad (ATS) chief Hemant Karkare, who fell to the terrorists’ bullets along with several other officers.
A senior official who was present in the control room admitted to DNA that in the absence of a single command, everybody moved in different directions for a while. It took almost eight hours for commandos from the elite National Security Guards to be deployed in Mumbai to deal with the crisis.
In Delhi, senior leaders from Sharad Pawar to Ahmed Patel got busy coordinating between the Centre and the state. A source in the central government said that after national security adviser MK Narayanan heard about the attack in Mumbai, the entire security top brass went into a huddle at prime minister Manmohan Singh’s residence.
Once it became clear that this was a fidayeen attack, the Centre began moving quickly. Apparently, home minister Shivraj Patil was brought into the picture later, after NSG director-general JK Datt had been told by the PMO to keep his commandos ready.
Even as Patil made an appearance on TV channels, two squads of NSG commandos were preparing to fly to Mumbai.
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