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The documentary on the terror attacks you haven’t seen…
I must let everyone know about a 48 minute documentary film called Terror in Mumbai, made by a British company Quicksilver for Dispatches, a Channel Four programme. Although it was screened on Channel Four in the UK, it has never been screened in India.
The videos were once on YouTube – now they have all been removed. There are a couple of websites where it can still be downloaded though, if you search hard enough.
The documentary is important because last week the Israeli Government issued a travel advisory to its citizens telling them to be wary of visiting India, unless they did so with armed guards.
It stated terrorist organisations linked to the Pakistani cell, which organised the Mumbai attacks, were planning a fresh string of attacks on the Indian subcontinent, again hoping to destablise the country by targeting tourist hotspots.
This provoked me to think everyone in India must watch this Dan Reed documentary to understand exactly what unfolded on November 28th, 2008. It is shocking it is not available here in India.
Not only does it include the actual recordings of all the phone calls between the terrorists and their handlers in Pakistan during the attacks, it also contains CCTV footage of the terrorists inside the Oberoi and Taj and interviews with the police and one of the gunman.
The Hindustan Times reported recently how the 250 National Security Guard commandos in Mumbai were being asked to pay Rs 1,200 per hour by the Mumbai Police to practise at a firing rang in Goregaon and they also don’t have anywhere permanent yet to base themselves. In fact, they are apparently being asked to move out of their Kalina base. (Surely it is more important they get housed than a Slumdog Millionaire star?)
This together with the worrying and unnecessary recent deaths of six firemen in a lift in Thane, owing to being poorly trained (who uses a lift when they are in a building on fire?), indicates a general worrying lack of investment in emergency services in India, especially in the light of the Israeli warning.
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Since it is not being screened in India, here is the synopsis of Terror in Mumbai.
The documentary starts by narrating how 10 Pakistanai terrorists landed on a hijacked fishing trawler at a slum near a wealthy part of Mumbai. They had already killed the crew, but forced the captain to navigate.
Indian Intelligence was recording all their conversations on their mobiles from the outset, it reveals.
The entire film is cleverly put together by a mix of the gunmen’s phone call recordings, CCTV footage from various spots in the terror attacks, pictures taken from the attacks and interviews with survivors and policemen.
It starts with the recording of a phone call to the gunmen from their Pakistani handlers asking if they have killed the captain of the boat.
One replies: “Yes, we have slit his throat.”
Then the narrator explains how the 10 gunmen split into pairs. Two pairs took taxis to their destinations and left bombs in them, set to explode an hour later. The bombs went off at Mazegaon and Vile Parle and everyone inside was killed.
Two headed to Fashion Street. A T-shirt seller gives an account of how he tried to flog a T shirt to one of the gunmen, thinking they were tourists. They even asked him whether Leopold Café was “famous” and he said it was.
The film then narrates how the gunmen, who were trained by Lashkar-e-Taiba, threw a grenade into Leopold Café, then took out their automatic rifles and shot indiscriminately. Eleven people were killed and 28 injured.
It does not have accounts by any survivors of Leopold.
It swiftly moves onto Chatrapathi Shivaji Terminal station, which two gunmen entered at 9.53pm. In this part various bereaved relatives are interviewed talking about they lost their loved ones, plus there are eyewitness accounts describing how men were “shooting without fear” as though they had “toy guns”.
It also shows CCTV footage of the carnage after the gunmen left with some very disturbing scenes of dead bodies and pools of blood. One boy, who watched six relatives die in the attack, describes how the floor was “vibrating with gunfire.”
The documentary is heavily focused on the station attack, where 52 people lost their lives and left more than 100 injured.
The narrator of the documentary alleges that most of the police at the railway station hid or just froze on the spot watching the massacre. Some were unarmed, all were poorly equipped, he claims.
CCTV footage shows one, after his gun jammed, throw a plastic chair at the terrorists.
“Our brains were not working. We just froze. We did not know what to do,” a policeman, in an interview on the film, says. The narrator claims the railway police only came out of hiding after the gunmen had gone.
It then claims that how hour and a half into the attacks the Mumbai traffic drove past the station oblivious to what had happened and two gunmen left the station and melted into the darkness without resistance.
In an interview Rakesh Maria, who was in charge of the control room at the police HQ that night, says “We had received calls they were coming to the Police HQ” defending allegations of a poor police presence at the railway station.
The narrator states that while the police struggled to understand what was happening, Indian Intelligence was continually intercepting phone calls between the handlers and terrorists and the handlers were watching the attack live on TV.
For example, in a recorded call, a handler says: “They are saying there are 50 gunmen and fires everywhere and people dying all over the place. You are doing a great job.”
Then it moves on to the Oberoi revealing how 13 people were killed in the Tiffin restaurant. The film has CCTV footage of the terrorists entering the hotel and the staff and guests ducking for cover. Nine staff and three guests were killed in the lobby. Pictures show the dead bodies in the Tiffin restaurant where 13 diners were killed.
Survivors are interviewed.
It shows CCTV footage of survivors waving desperately from their hotel rooms and has a lengthy interview with a Turkish couple that was taken hostage at gun point, along with 13 others but escaped being shot because they started reciting the Koran. “The terrorists told us they would not kill us because we were their brothers,” the woman states.
The film then moves on to the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower where the narrator describes how two backpackers “strolled in carrying grenades, guns, bullets and fruits and nuts to last days.”
Phone calls with the handlers show how enamored by the terrorists were by the opulence of their surroundings. ‘They even have 30 inch computer screens” one tells the handler.
But the handlers are not interested and tell them to pile mattresses up in one room in the heritage wing and set them on fire.
The handlers keep calling the terrorists up and asking: “Peace be with you. Have you started the fire yet? When people see flames, they will get a bit afraid. Throw a few grenades as well. How hard can it be?
Finally they ring up and congratulate the gunmen once the Taj is on fire.
“Yours is the most important target,” they say on a recorded call. “The media is covering it more than any other.”
Next it interviews a policeman left alive in the back of a Police jeep, under the dead bodies of other policemen, after terrorists sprayed them with gunfire
It then flashes back to the Oberoi where 35 people were killed. Then it moves onto Nariman House.
“Killing a Jew is worth 50 of the others” the terrorists at Nariman House are told by their handlers in a phone call.
There the gunmen have got two hostages: a 62-year-old Israeli grandmother called Yocheved Orpaz who had just dropped in to the centre to thank the rabbi for procuring kosher food for her and Norma Shvartzblat (50), a Jew who had been living in Mexico and had been backpacking around India.
Recorded phone calls shown reveal Norma was forced to call the Israeli consulate in Delhi and ask them to speak to the Indian Government and get them to phone the Nariman House terrorists and negotiate the release of the two Jewish hostages for the release of one gunman who had been captured.
Interviews with him lying in hospital are also featured.
After no call comes from the Indian Government 24 hours into the attack the handlers tell the gunmen to shoot both of them. The sound of them both getting shot is caught on the phone recording. It flashes back to the Trident where one gunman is left are on the 18th floor and is hiding in the bathroom.
“Don’t get arrested” he is told. “You are very close to Heaven. You must be killed for your mission to end successfully. “As the handler speaks to him his phone goes dead as he is killed.
For more information click here.
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Naomi Reply:
October 22nd, 2009 at 7:47 pm
What is weird is that Indian Intelligence was recording all the phone calls from the outset (hence gaining knowledge into the operation) and yet on the ground it appeared noone knew what was going on…..
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Shubham Reply:
October 23rd, 2009 at 1:23 pm
This is indeed an insightful account of what happened that day in Mumbai, a quick point though the recordings that you hear were retrieved later by the intelligence agencies through the VOIP protocol so its not that the agencies were aware of the attack . But still the state of our Police forces is shocking and underlines the drastic overhaul needed to make them competent.
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