Mumbai one year on: pain remains – and the fear

Anuj Chopra
Foreign correspondent,

• Last Updated: November 23. 2009 12:34AM UAE / November 22. 2009 8:34PM GMT

Appaso Patil, centre, suffered four bullet wounds from which he has yet to recover. Subhash Sharma for The National

MUMBAI // Lalji Pandey almost did not make it on 26/11, the name now given to the terrorist attack in Mumbai last year.

He was in the waiting room of Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus railway station, intending to catch a train to attend his nephew’s wedding in his hometown of Pratapgarh in northern India. It was evening rush hour and the room was humming with the steady movement of travellers carrying piles of luggage.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, emerged two gun-toting men, one of them short and stocky, wearing cargo pants and a T-shirt, the other lean and clad in black. The two men, later identified as Ajmal Kasab and Abu Ismail, sprayed a volley of bullets at the crowd.

One bullet hit a bone in Mr Pandey’s hand. Another lodged in his outer thigh. Many other travellers collapsed dead in front of his eyes.

“It was a terrifying moment,” he said, sitting on a bed in a crowded hospital ward amid the sickly smell of antiseptics. “I didn’t think I would survive.”

To the world, Mumbai bounced back after last year’s attack that began on the night of November 26, claiming 166 lives. But for such victims as Mr Pandey, a migrant labourer from Uttar Pradesh, nothing is normal anymore.

The attack left him crippled and unemployed for the past year. Mr Pandey’s weekly trips to hospitals have not stopped. Last week, he was scheduled to undergo a third operation in 12 months involving the “Ilizarov technique”, a complex, bone-lengthening procedure. The surgery was called off at the last moment at JJ Hospital, a public hospital in Mumbai, because of the unavailability of A-negative blood, Mr Pandey’s blood group.

Mumbai is famous the world over for its fabled “spirit” – the city’s never-say-die attitude and its ability to bounce back after the most terrible tragedies, among them a series of bombings in 1993 and 2006.

Beneath the veneer of this much-celebrated “spirit” lie traumatic stories of victims struggling to get their lives back on track a year after 26/11.

Arun Jadhav survived the attack, but he wishes he did not. The police constable saw six of his colleagues die in front of his eyes.

Mr Jadhav was in a Jeep on the fateful night with six other policemen, including Hemant Karkare, the chief of Mumbai’s antiterrorism squad, and Vijay Salaskar, a senior police inspector.

As the Jeep careered around a corporate bank, it was sprayed with multiple rounds of bullets by Kasab and Ismail. Mr Jadhav was seriously injured in the attack by three bullets, sustaining hits to the shoulder and abdomen, but he was the only one in the Jeep who survived.

He was writhing in pain, buried under the weight of his dead colleagues in the back seat, as the jeep was taken over by the two terrorists. He was unable to reach for his gun.

As the terrorists drove the Jeep, the mobile phone of one of Mr Jadhav’s colleagues trilled. Irritated by the ringing phone, Kasab, sitting in the front seat, turned back and pumped bullets into him.

His body jumped over Mr Jadhav as the high-velocity bullets were lodged in his back.

Mr Jadhav lay under the pile of corpses, still and motionless, pretending that he was dead. The terrorists abandoned the Jeep at the state government headquarters in the commercial district, and hijacked another car. Mr Jadhav instantly sent out an SOS message on his wireless, flashing the number on the plate of the hijacked car.

A year later, Mr Jadhav’s injuries have nearly healed, but he is still racked by survival guilt.

“Salaskar sahib fondly called me bhau,” he said, referring to Vijay Salaskar, who was killed in the incident and who had treated Mr Jadhav like a “younger brother” despite the difference in their police ranks. In the past decade, Mr Jadhav participated in 50 police operations, known as “encounters” in local parlance, led by Salaskar against underworld criminals.

After recovering, he asked the Mumbai police commissioner that he not be posted at police stations where he had worked with Salaskar, lest those memories come rushing back to him. Many of the survivors from the attack advocate capital punishment for Mr Kasab, the lone surviving suspect, whose trial in Mumbai continues.

Arun Jadhav, a police constable, who saw six of his colleagues die in front of him, shows a bullet wound. Subhash Sharma for The National

“When I was in the Jeep, all I wanted to do was gun him down,” Mr Jadhav said grimly. “But I’m glad he survived. India found new leads into the investigation, important information about the brains behind the attack through this lone survivor.”

“Kasab and his accomplices went on a murderous rampage around Mumbai,” Mr Pandey said. “You have to set an example, send out a tough message to other terrorists planning similar assaults. You have to convey to them that they will be sternly dealt with if they try this again.”

Memories of the attack make his blood boil. But his rage is mixed with trepidation.

In the past year, metal detectors, dog squads and gun-toting security personnel behind sandbags have been positioned at railway stations, airports, malls, cinemas and hotels around Mumbai. The city resembles a fortress. But the very nature of Mumbai, a seaside port city, makes it vulnerable, Mr Pandey says.

With its huge population, the city offers anonymity to outsiders entering the city. It symbolises India’s economic strength, and it makes the city a soft target.

Since the attack, Mr Pandey frets that explosives packs could be hidden around any corner in this crowded city, waiting to detonate in the face of innocent citizens.

“If a handful of 21-year-olds can kill the chief of the antiterrorism squad, no one can feel safe in this big city,” he said.

More disturbing to some observers is that the masterminds of the attack are still at large.

“The ebb from outrage to rage, its decline to umbrage, and then a drift to amnesia is the narrative of the 12 months since the terrorist assault on Mumbai, which shook India and startled the world,” MJ Akbar, a prominent columnist, wrote in the Times of India newspaper yesterday. “War is not the only definition of strength. But there is a whole array of diplomatic and economic instruments that can be mobilised nationally and internationally. We had the world’s sympathy a year ago. We squandered it with inaction.”

Observers such as Akbar accuse the Indian government of a ham-fisted approach to dealing with terrorists. India failed to pressure Pakistan, mainly through diplomatic channels, to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure on its soil, some observers say.

Even worse, India’s foreign policy towards Pakistan has been incongruous in the past 12 months.

The home ministry has sent seven dossiers of evidence to Pakistan, aggressively demanding that it eradicates its country’s terrorism. On the other hand, almost simultaneously, it is making peace overtures to its nuclear rival.

“America’s immediate response to 9/11 was over the top; our phased reaction has been under the table,” Akbar wrote in his column.

More aggravating to some observers are recent intelligence reports that more attacks of the scale of 26/11 are being planned on Pakistani soil.

“There is something intrinsically shameful about a situation where 10 young Pakistanis can hold India’s great city to ransom for nearly three days,” Vir Sanghvi, the editor of Hindustan Times, a national daily, wrote in a column.

“It’s a depressing conclusion. But it is inescapable. Very little has really changed [in the last one year]. A new terror attack like 26/11 can happen again. And our government may not be able to protect us.”



foreign.desk@thenational.ae