Three reasons why the terrorists were delayed….(…and thus lives were saved at CST and other places)

By Pradeep Gupta

It’s a normal thing for Mumbaikars to curse traffic snarls, the lack of a sea route to their offices and the state of public loos. Perhaps we had better re-think our opinions.
For, according to the Mumbai police, three factors caused delays in the launch of the terror attack on the city. The original plan was to start the carnage between 7 and 8 p.m. But the inflatable dinghy the terrorists used betrayed them by going too slow, the traffic held them up once they got into taxis, and finally, the public loo at CST seemed to entrance the two who reached there so much that they spent nearly half an hour inside!
On November 26, a Wednesday, Mumbai came under attack at around 9.30pm. By then, the majority of office goers from the central business district had already left for their homes. Imagine the toll that the group could have inflicted during peak hours, with casualties probably approaching thousands. As it is, this brazen attack claimed 188 people’s lives while more than 250 were injured.
According to Crime Branch officials, the terrorists came from Karachi through the sea route to within 12 nautical miles in the mother ship. They then hijacked a trawler, the Kuber, after hoisting a SOS flag. At four nautical miles they switched to rubber dinghies.
When they were four miles away from Mumbai, they dumped the Kuber, having killed her Indian crew, and used inflatable rubber dinghies for the last stretch. However, they had failed to take a very simple fact into account – the weight of their weaponry. The result was that it slowed them down so much that the dinghies took two hours longer to reach than anticipated.
According to officials, six of the 10 terrorists landed at Badhwar Park near Cuffe Parade, while the other four continued to Sassoon Docks. These were the four who were set to go to the Taj Mahal Hotel and Nariman House. On the way two of them paused at Leopold to start the operation off, before fleeing to the Taj. The others split into groups of two each as per their plan and then hired taxis and set out on their missions of death. But the heavy traffic further delayed them.
According to officials connected with investigation, “Kasab revealed that they were running very late for their deadly operation. And then his colleague, Ismail Khan, who finally died at Chowpatty, spent around half an hour in the suburban section toilet, refreshing himself before embarking on his murderous spree.”
By the time he got out and the terrorists started using their AK 47s, much of the crowd had already left for home. But there were more than enough for the men to attack, crowds of poor people waiting for later trains, families waiting in the main section to go outstation.
For them, neither traffic jam, nor heavy dinghies or visits to the loo proved saviors.


Box:
Capacity of rubber dinghies

Both weight and wind conspired to delay the terrorists, according to the officials of the crime branch.
And according to Abhijit Mayekar, Project Manager of Aarav Offshore Services involved in the dinghy business and who has also seen the dinghy used by the terrorists, “The boat used by them had a capacity of 10 to 12 people. But they were carrying huge quantities of arms, ammunition, grenades and other supplies, and this caused the slowdown that made them reach their destination late.”
Normally, depending upon the engine, the dinghies vary between capacity of 4 to 12 people, going at speeds of from 6 to 12 nautical miles an hour. Ordinarily, the boat should have reached in one hour. Instead, it took much longer.