Indian citizen don’t accept official version of Mumbay attacks, II

Here are are some questions on mumbai events raised by sensible indian nationals on indian website (rediff.com). Some of the questions are pasted below for a thorough and patient reading.

=========================

If the terrorists were Pakistani, how did they have such an intimate knowledge of the terrain?

The two who attacked the CST station on Wednesday night made their way from the CST through a road on the left side of The Times of India building towards the Cama and Albess hospital/Azad Maidan police station, a route that is known only to true-blood Mumbaikars.

Were they locals?

Or did they conduct unbelievably extensive reconaissance of the likely routes of escape?

These same two or three men, who are said to have commandeered ATS Chief Hemant Karkare’s police Qualis after shooting him, Additional Commissioner of Police Ashok Kamte and Inspector Vijay Salaskar, revealed similar familarity with the road outside the Esplanade Court, making an easy U-turn towards the Metro cinema junction rather than head on the road towards the CST.

How did they know this if they were Pakistanis? The terrorists are said to have done extensive reconnaissance of the city.

If they are Pakistanis, how did they get earlier entry to the city unnoticed?

Did they come in by boat? Or did they use other routes to escape notice?

Such an operation could not have been conducted without extensive training and preparation, possibly on models of the Taj and Trident or Chabad House/Nariman House.

Could this have been achieved at the alleged rudimentary training camps hosted by the Lashkar-e-Tayiba?

The element of urban warfare training was esentially required which could not have been achived in isolated rural training camps.

How did they know Chabad House/Nariman House, which even long-time residents of Colaba — the area in South Mumbai where the Taj, the Leopold Cafe and Chabad/Nariman House are located — are unfamiliar with?

The choice of this target indicates precision thinking — it is doubtful if the Lashkar strategists are capable of such deep strategy Early on Thursday morning, the television channels spoke about an exchange of fire between the terrorists and the police near the Liberty cinema (which is close to the Metro cinema/Cama hospital, but situated on an inner road).

There was even fear expressed that these terrorists would enter the Bombay hospital, but nothing was heard about them thereafter.

Where did they go? Were these two/three terrorists the same men who took over the police Qualis and shot at people near the Metro junction? Or have they escaped? The police say the two men, who took over the Qualis, grabbed the Skoda that was halted at a police road block near the Girgaum Chowpatty beach.

One of them was later killed by the police. Where did the other man go?

Is he the Lashkar terrorist who is appparently singing like a canary to the police? Or is he someone else? If these are the two of the three terrorists who attacked the CST, what happened to the third man seen in photographs and video captures? Where did he vanish?

The Times of India reported on Friday morning that wellknown food critic Sabina Sehgal-Saikia’s cellular phone recorded activity in the Raigad area, which is located across the sea from the Taj, where she was staying on the night of the attacks?

Nothing has been heard from Saikia for over a day, so how did her phone reach Raigad?

Could one of the terrorists have escaped under the guise of a guest to the Raigad area?To this Mohit says: Sabina’s husband has clarified that Airtel reps have told him that since the towers around Taj were shut down, it is possible that the phone might have picked up the signal from Raigad tower.

Could some of the terrorists have come by boat from the Alibag-Murud Janjira area in Maharashtra’s Raigad district, rather than from Pakistan?

Boats ply through the day from the Alibaug area to the Gateway of India, and it would be easy for terrorists to use this mode of transport rather than high-speed boats which would have attracted the Coast Guard’s attention.

According to a Maharashtra Times, the two terrorists who killed the three police officers on Wednesday night spoke Marathi!

This disclosure casts fresh doubt on the origin of the terrorists. Or did each terrorist from an enemy nation have an Indian accomplice accompanying him?

If the attacks were restricted to South Mumbai for logistical reasons, who was responsible for the explosion on the taxi near the Santa Cruz airport in northwest Mumbai, which is located at least 25 km from Colaba?

If the terrorists are interested in something, how come they have not made any demands in spite of having taken so many hostages?

If they kept the hostages for so long, they should have started negotiations also. This indicates that they have some other, larger ultimate objective. What is that, and has it been investigated? Assuming such large quantities of weapons had been pre-stored in the hotels, where was the security system to search these bags while being taken to the hotel?

How come the terrorists were able to fight for more then 40 hours without any sleep?

Manmohan Singh has claimed that this terror attack has been executed by external forces. What proof has the government got in order to make such a claim? Every time a situation like this happens, the government of India makes such claims and then they give no proof to anyone, especially the common people who are always kept in dark.

How did the room service guys not find the bombs if it had been preserved somewhere within the Taj? Some room service guys are involved? Someone inside the Taj is definitely involved. The television visuals clearly showed Hemant Karkare wearing a helmet and a bullet-proof vest. How did he get hit in the chest?

The terrorists used satellite phones to communicate. How come they left it on boats alongwith GPS is they were so smart.

With a major naval headquarters in Mumbai, how come the marine commandos came into action only the subsequent morning?

How can people carry huge rifles slung across their shoulders in the midst of a milling crowd?

They are not like handguns which can be concealed under clothing and taken out when they need to be used. How come there was no panic just upon sighting people with rifles marching into a railway station or hotel lobby?

Did the Taj Mahal hotel officials have any sort of permission or authority from the Mumbai police before relaxing their security measures just days before the attack?

If so, on what grounds was the permission granted? As a corollary, were the terrorists waiting for the measures to be relaxed before striking?

I was once stopped by the Taj hotel staff for being in slippers (chappals). If you can be so alert to look down at chappals (for w/e reasons), how come the same security system blunders when the ammunitions were being stored in the room well in advance? What could have been the motive of the taxi blast?

What was the hotel security doing when the terrorists barged into the hotel? Were the security personnel unarmed or just not equipped enough to face the attack? If this is the case, then is the security system in our country foolproof? Do we have enough protocols to face different kinds of threats?

From about 10:30 pm on 26th November to about 8 am on 27th November there was a complete standoff at both the hotels. There were a few guests who managed to get out at about 3 am from the Taj but there was no full scale assault by the Indian forces till the NSG got there at 8 am.

What took place during that period of 10 hours is the key to understanding the motive of the terrorists.

If the terrorists just wanted to kill everyone, they had ample opportunity to do so. They were obviously holding out for some kind of deal. Did the NSG spend those 10 hours negotiating a deal? Did they even make contact? I find it hard to believe that the NSG stormed the place and rescued almost every person taken hostage.

The circumstances in which three top Mumbai policemen charged with investigating the underworld were shot is puzzling as well. Only a trained sharpshooter with inside information could have managed to do this. The fact that the sniper then got away in the police van adds further credence to the fact that he had help from the inside.

How could they have travelled 900 km to Indian territory in deeply guarded waters undetected?

There are differing reports on how the top decorated officers got shot. Were they in the same car as reported by the Mumbai Mirror? Or were they shot somewhere else?

When a machine gun is sprayed normally the cops would have got hit by one bullet.

How did Hemant Karkare have 3 shots in his chest? There is still no explanation on why he would remove his bullet-proof vest when he had worn it on live television? Why are we not getting the stats on the terrorists bodies?

Why did the terrorists choose a Wednesday night to attacks these popular Western tourist hotels? A weekend might have caused greater damage. The timing of the attack on Thanksgiving in the USA made sure that a large American audience watched this unfold. Is this a first shot in an opening gambit, much as the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan. How many terrorists can board a small rubber boat laden with explosives and guns altogether. The TV crew managed to get photos of the terrorists standing in the window with guns. They appeared to look like nice targets for snipers. How come there were no snipers taking shots at them? Were there any photographs of the terrorists taken by hostages on cell phone cameras or otherwise also from CCTV cameras?

40 hours without sleep or rest?? You can’t do it even when you are just sitting. I can’t imagine in that intense situation. So were they using any medical stuff??

Different passports have been found from the terrorists, what do they suggest? In one video, when the late Hemant Karkare was putting on his bullet-proof jacket, I noticed that one person was hiding his face from camera. As the camera moved, this guy moved along with the camera by covering his face.

Who was that person? The army said the terrorists keep shifting their positions from one floor to another, and from one room to another. Why was their transit area not checked and blocked initially? To go from one floor to another they would use a lift, stairs or laundry passage. To go from one room to another they have to pass through corridors. Why were all these not blocked and secured initially?

If the terrorists are killed, why are the photographs not released?.

Why don’t the police show the terrorists’ pictures to the public and ask whether they have seen any of these guys earlier?

In a telephone interview with CBC News journalist Arun Asthana said there are reports that some of the militants had stayed at a guest house there (Nariman House) for up to 15 days before the attacks.

"They had a huge mass of ammunition, arms and food there," Asthana said.

How did they know about the Jewish centre when even most locals were unaware about it?

A quote from an article in the DNA newspaper: "They had purchased around two crates of chicken and liquor worth Rs 25,000 from two shops in Colaba," another resident Joseph D’Mello said.

"They then entered the Nariman House building and took the Israeli family captive."

If they were fundamentalist Muslims, what were they doing buying large quantities of liquor?

According to a BBC article by Soutik Biswas: ’Locals say the orgy of killings in Mumbai began here. Three men walked into the cafe, drank beer, settled their bills and walked out. Then they fished out guns from their bags and began firing.’ What were they doing drinking beer if they were fundamentalist Muslims?Quoting the same BBC article by Soutik Biswas:

"They did not look Indian, they looked foreign. One of them, I thought, had blonde hair. The other had a punkish hairstyle. They were neatly dressed," says Mr Amir." What nationality were these "foreign looking" blonde haired guys who were part of the terrorist group?

How come even before their mission was over, the arrested terrorist is telling all that we WANT TO HEAR? How come an important clue like a GPS instrument was left behind so that we could find it? How come the GPS (a very helpful and expensive instrument) was not carried along?? How come it is easy to blow the JW Marriott in Pakistan (which was inside a guarded compound), but cars with RDX were not used to blow away the Taj? Is it me alone who noticed on the wrist of one of the ’terrorists’ (the short fat pudgy one) the yellow saffron band that is only worn by Hindus and Buddhists?

Just wanted to know, how the security personnel storming the two hotels could shoot and use hand grenades in a bid to flush out the terrorists, knowing there could be hostages inside. How could they know they were targeting only the terrorists and that the hostages were not likely to get shot at or injured in the process. Considering there could be women and children too in there.

While cleaning the hotel rooms daily, did nobody notice this much foodstuff and lot of bags kept in the terrorists’s room? How much arms and ammunition did they have to fight up to 61 long hours? The terrorists were not using gas masks. Why we didn’t look for that option to save the hostages without any casualties?

Were the terrorists not using hostages as human shields? In a TV interview an injured commando from his hospital bed said that they used a charge to blow off the door and then lobbed grenades inside the room. He also said he was not sure how many terrorists were there and the terrorist was getting cover fire from his buddy so there were at least 2 in the room. So how did the commando who lobbed grenades ascertain there were no hostages inside the room being used as human shields?

Also, in a TV interview, the injured policeman accompanying Karkare, Salaskar and Kamte said they were asked to look out for a red car, and they saw the car but were ambushed by the terrorists 100 metres ahead of the car. So did the terrorists have real-time information of the police vehicle? How come all the 3 top cops were traveling in the same vehicle and that too seated in the front?

Why did Salaskar decide to drive the vehicle himself? If Hemant Karkare was shot in the chest the photo of his body being taken for cremation had blood clot marks under his right eye and top of the right cheek? The boats had landed in fishermen’s colony at around 9 at night. How could the alien terrorists locate the landing site at night, considering a very long shoreline? Who will make the highest profit out of all the mayhem? There were more than 100 armed policemen at CST station and they couldn’t take down 2-3 terrorists?

Especially, the RPF which is equipped with automatic weapons. : Shouldn’t there be a thorough probe into the killing of Hemant Karkare and his colleagues, given that certain political forces in the country had every reason to target the ATS chief and were actually issuing death threats to him? The statements extracted so far from the lone captured terrorist are riddled with inconsistencies, for example, if they were planning to blow up the Taj, why did they have only 8 kg of RDX? The blast at the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad involved no less than 600kg of RDX and TNT explosives! How can we trust anything that this particular source tells us about the actual events of the 26th night?

I would like to know the manner in which the militant attacked their targets and the tactics they had taken could not have been done by just Lashkar or Hizbul or any other militant organisation .

The roads of Colaba are so confusing even for people living in Mumbai . Who guided them through those roads and to target Leopold? How did the militants know that foreign guests visit Leopold ? Besides very good knowledge of the terrain — which a foreigner is unlikely to have despite very good recce work — there are other things which indicate that at least some of these were locals. One terrorist reportedly spoke to one guest saying, "Your name sounds South Indian, are you a Brahmin". A Pakistani (or for that matter any foreigner) is unlikely to have knowledge of Indian names and the Hindu caste system. Does this indicate that at least some of them were locals?

— 
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.