The Ram Pradhan committee set up to investigate the alleged lapses in the police and government response to the terrorist attack on Mumbai has virtually given both a clean chit.
The Ram Pradhan committee set up to investigate the alleged lapses in the police and government response to the terrorist attack on Mumbai last November has virtually given both a clean chit.
Ten terrorists from Pakistan came by the sea route and landed unnoticed on the city’s shores in the evening of November 26, 2008, going on to spread murder and mayhem in prime South Mumbai locations over the next three days. But the committee said there was no failure on the part of the state government to prevent the attack. It also praised the police for their “commendable” performance during the “war-like” situation.
The committee had to decide whether the state government had failed to act on intelligence inputs from central agencies, whether the response to the attack by the state forces was appropriate, and what measures ought to be taken to prevent such attacks in future.
The committee said Union home minister P Chidambaram’s apology to the people of Mumbai for the failure of central intelligence agencies to predict the attack absolved the state of any blame.
“There was no specific and direct input to the state and hence it can’t be called the state’s failure,” committee chairman Pradhan told reporters.
Pradhan said the Mumbai Police’s work during the operation was commendable. “No other police force would have fared better as it was a ‘war-like’ situation,” he said. “Many young officers lost their lives while others were injured fighting the terrorists. We have appreciated their work.”
The committee comprising retired cabinet secretary Pradhan and former Research and Analysis Wing officer V Balachandran submitted its report to chief minister Ashok Chavan on Wednesday. The 100-page report will be presented to the cabinet soon and then tabled in the legislature.
The committee has suggested measures to be taken to deal with such crises in future. “The government has already undertaken a number of measures in this respect,” Pradhan said. “We have recommended a few more.”
He said the inquiry conducted by his committee was an administrative one and not judicial. “To complete the task in the stipulated time, we decided to interview only officials concerned with the attack,” he said. “Non-official parties were not entertained though they wanted to be represented before the committee.”
Fifty-one officials were interviewed by the committee, which gave its report in three months.
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