New Delhi: The 60-hour-long operation that
neutralised the Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorists during the Mumbai
attack last year could have been handled in a different way
had there been a "certain type" of equipment and better
intelligence, says the chief of the anti-terror force which
fought them.
The terrorists, who were in "top physical fitness", knew
the topography of the three locations -- Taj, Trident and
Nariman House -- so well that he feels the LeT men who
undertook the operation could have themselves done the recce
of the targets under assumed names.
JK Dutt, then the chief of National Security Guard
(NSG), said the Mumbai's elite Anti-Terrorist Squad, which was
then headed by slain IPS officer Hemant Karkare, was a "young
force" and the state police had failed to realise for long
that the gunmen throwing grenades and firing at innocent
people in various parts of the city were not part of any gang
war as they believed and that it was a terror attack.
Dutt, who retired as the force chief in February this
year, said that till the last moments of
the three-day operation the NSG did not have any concrete
intelligence on the number of men holed up in each of the
premises or even initially that the hotels had more than one
building.
PTI
First Published: Sunday, November 22, 2009, 13:02