NEW DELHI–Ninety minutes after terrorists from Pakistan landed on the shore of Mumbai, fanned out through the city, and began a murderous rampage, Indian home minister Shivraj Patel received a phone call at his residence about a "breaking news" story on TV that demanded his attention.
It was 11 p.m. on Nov. 26 and Patel, the minister in charge of domestic security, was about to learn via the public airwaves what many Indians had already known for more than an hour: his country's commercial capital was under siege.
Four days later, Patel was forced to resign.
It's been seven months since 174 people were killed and 239 others were wounded during the Mumbai terror attacks and grim revelations about the bungled response to the attacks are still surfacing. Details of how Patel first learned of the incidents were reported just last week, and high-ranking Indian officials are still losing their jobs.
Mumbai's police chief Hassan Gafoor was ousted this week, his transfer to the Police Housing Corporation coming just days before the release of a government-commissioned report that criticized his "poor leadership" during the attacks. The report said Gafoor acted irresponsibly and failed to take charge of the situation.
Gafoor isn't the only one to come under scrutiny for his handling of the terror attacks. Among the criticisms levelled at police and other authorities in recent days:
Mumbai police failed to establish a command centre after learning of the terrorist assault, a standard operating procedure that was introduced in 1993 following a string of bomb blasts in the city.
State authorities asked for elite commandos to be deployed at 11:30 p.m., but it wasn't until 3 a.m. that 200 commandos flew from New Delhi to Mumbai. Once they landed, it was a further four hours before they began operations.
Even though there were two trained hostage negotiators in Mumbai during the assault, police never attempted to contact the terrorists, a move that could have bought police more time.
Firefighters arrived at the Taj Hotel with ladders that extended to the third floor, endangering some guests stranded on higher floors.
After landing on Mumbai's shore at about 9:30 p.m., the 10 gunmen split into small groups and within 30 minutes, had arrived at five targets: the city's main rail station, a Jewish centre, the Leopold Cafe, and the Oberoi and Taj hotels.
Newly disclosed closed-circuit TV footage showed four of the gunmen who stormed the Taj hotel entered a guest room at 12:38 a.m. on Nov. 27 and stayed there for close to two hours. With roughly 120 armed policemen on the ground floor of the hotel, police watching monitors in the hotel's security control room saw the terrorists enter the sixth-floor guest room. Yet instead of sending officers to engage the terrorists or keep them pinned in the room, Gafoor ordered police to wait for backup.
More time was wasted when police began clearing sections of the Taj. Instead of duplicating an electronic-swipe master key, police went floor-to-floor breaking doors down. With 323 rooms on 19 floors and a further 140 rooms such as the bar, restaurant and shops, it took five minutes to open or break open each room and then clear it.
"All through the night, it seems nobody had even considered whether it was possible to get duplicate swipe keys made," the Indian Express newspaper reported.
Transcripts of phone conversations between the terrorists in the Taj and their handlers in Pakistan have also come to light.
At 3:10 a.m. on Nov. 27, six hours after they stormed the Taj, four terrorists received a phone call from a contact in Pakistan.
"Greetings!" one of the terrorists answered.
"Greetings!" the caller replied. "There are three ministers and one secretary of the cabinet in your hotel. We don't know in which room."
The terrorists reply: "Oh! That is good news!
"It is the icing on the cake."
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