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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.
(7 votes, average: 3.14 out of 5)
Loading ...Posted by Naomi Canton on Wednesday, October 21, 2009 at 9:07 pm
Filed under Mumbai · Tagged 26/11, Channel Four, documentary, documentary film, Israeli Government, Mumbai, Mumbai attacks, pakistan, Pakistani cell, Quicksilver for Dispatches, Terror in Mumbai, terrorist organisations
(4.5 out of 5)
can be found here…
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=1e4_1246490858
very insightful documentary. thanks for pointing it out to us. but i can’t even describe the anger i felt listening to those calm, educated handlers casually deciding whether people should die or not. the indian govt made it so easy for some prick in pakistan to play dice with our lives. the next round of attackers are probably waiting for the security to get lax again.
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Why is Indian media not showing this ?
or
doing a similar analysis or similar documentary film ?
are they just afraid of hurting sentiments of some local muslim accomplices ?
why this self imposed censorship ?
How can you even fight an enemy who has lot of local accomplices and giving pin point intelligence ?
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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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Very nice article !!! I definitely will watch this documentary.
About the firemen using the lifts during the fire, there is something called ‘Fire Lifts’. Google it.
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Naomi Reply:
October 22nd, 2009 at 2:56 pm
So you are saying it was correct for them to take the lift? I don’t think it was a fire lift.. was it? I wonder why they used the lift? Should they not have used the stairs or escaped from the windows..
Here is another link to Terror in Mumbai….http://europenews.dk/en/node/24746
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Arvind Reply:
October 22nd, 2009 at 6:00 pm
In case of Fire, there is a mandatory fire lift to be there in the building. It has to be so designed that fresh air is pumped into it so that smoke is removed, in case of fire. Also it has to be operated only by a fireman’s switch from inside when there is a fire in the building. that is, no residents can use it( call buttons from outside are disabled). The case in Thane is due to poor maintenance of these lifts. And the fireman is supposed to use it in case of fire and not the general public.
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I have been told you can download it from here:-
http://theforceofreason.com/2009/07/01/dispatches-terror-in-mumbai/
and here
http://www.alivetorrents.com/torrent/2729257/dispatches-terror-in-mumbai-ws-pdtv-xvid-pboy/
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http://en.sevenload.com/videos/eEBMBUE-Terror-in-Mumbai-complete
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I haven’t seen this doc but can you be surprised G Bush and his mates were doing the same thing sort of. The thing about the Mumbai attacks and to a degree the 9/11 stuff to is that the terrorists were/are poorly trained and in the shoe bomber and our transport attacks they had to make an explosive which is such a give away getting it together, in the case of attacks like the London attack plastic explosive logically would have been better. But these people weren’t really attached to any group. 9/11 where but they still did it with such little equipment. All of this proves determined people will always get through. We had the IRA for 30yrs until bombs going off got about an inch in the papers who cares, then the IRA switch to economic targets with huge bombs driven from Ireland into this country not put together here. 3-4 of them got the major govt to the table. Killing people didn’t matter to Thatcher and co for obvious reasons. They brought in the prevention of terrorism act. This is/was a much hated piece of legislation, but it had to be renewed every year. The knee jerk laws brought in by Blair and Brown mean now that under anti terror laws the police can stop and question children. These laws are being used daily by our police in this democracy to infringe peoples rights and freedoms. So the terrorists have won. DON’T let them win there one way you can do that is by going about your lives what ever the risk as if there were none. Also feel a forgiveness for the poor deluded fools that will listen to the offers of virgins in heaven. But what ever you do in the face of terrorism keep smiling, that way they will know they can’t win.
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Paritosh Reply:
October 23rd, 2009 at 10:40 pm
@Mick
“But what ever you do in the face of terrorism keep smiling, that way they will know they can’t win.”
yeah yeah, keep smiling and they keep spilling your blood. what a dumb idea to fight terror!!! to ignore it ,live in denial and act as though nothing has happened.
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Mick Reply:
October 24th, 2009 at 10:48 am
So as an individual how else would you deal with it, hide under the bed?
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What a gruesome day, watching this documentry makes me feel very nervous. I hope we in Mumbai never face such a day ever again.
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In a way I’m surprised that anyone is surprised that intelligence services plot to destabilize a perceived enemy. As long as your police forces don’t respond to any future incident as the police in Birmingham and other cities in England did in 70’s. IE pick up the first convenient Irishmen they could fined then fit them up, and if you read the comments of the Judge and the subsequent appeal judges comments you wonder if they knew that they had been fitted up and did their best to keep it secret. As a left wing rebel Naomi surely it’s a bit naive of you to think that any govt org ISN’T up to no good, let alone a by nature shadowy org that is open to radicalisation and can attract bigots of one kind or another. Do you remember the Supt John Stalker lead inquiry into a “Shoot to kill” policy in Northern Ireland where that led after it was eventually set up. Then to rub it in OUR security services using the SAS shot 4 IRA members on Gibraltar and then disappeared once again they knew from the beginning what was happening, that was a message from the Tory govt. “We don’t talk to terrorists” they had to in the end. But I must say that your situation is a bit different.
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I ‘ve seen the documentary. The reconstruction in meticulous detail of everything that happened in the terror attack is bone chilling. Should do lot of good if it were shown widely in India.
I must congratulate you for having the courage to stay around in India even after this monstrosity in which westerners were especially targeted and in the light of the recent Israeli travel advisory.
I actually came across your blog a long time ago but I have never found your articles very engaging. Your blog comes with a warning sounded out to ‘conservative Indians’ to ‘brace themselves’. So far your articles don’t justify this warning. Not even the staunchest right-wing hoodlum from Bajrang Dal will find anything in your articles to get offended. I suggest you spice it up. Let your thoughts run free and don’t think too much about people’s sensibilities while writing anything. Otherwise your blog will remain a tad boring.
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Naomi Reply:
October 25th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
What would you like me to write about exactly? I await your suggestions.
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Mick Reply:
October 26th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
Well Naomi you could always let your thoughts run free and do a blog about Marsala seeing as Ambuj wants it spiced up couldn’t you.
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Ambuj Reply:
October 27th, 2009 at 12:00 am
@ Mick
“Spicing it up” certainly doesn’t come with any connotation of adding “masala” in the usual sense of the term. I, for one, certainly don’t want to read gossip columns on Bollywood stars and media celebrities who as a rule are born amongst ****, bred in it and now treat the world to the very same - “****”. It completely escapes me as to how on earth these bollywood producers continue to escape financial bankruptcy when a clear bankruptcy of ideas and talent has occurred auld lang syne. Maybe the world is stupider than one presumes.
@Naomi
Your choice of topics is just fine. I like to read an insightful and articulate article on almost any topic. But I do have a bone to pick with on the cursory way you treated some of the topics in your blog which I feel you with your very different background could have done complete justice with.
For instance, apropos to your blog entries
“How Facebook ended my relationship” and
“Dating in a foreign land”
lets take up the topic “The modern city bred Indian male”. You must have had a lot of interaction with specimens of this kind and it shows in your blogs. But you ‘ve always shied away from drawing any meaningful conclusions and what conclusions you do manage to draw are laughably simplistic. Here is an excellent article on the same topic you may want to look at.
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main42.asp?filename=Ne010809coverstory.asp
Another of your blog-entries which made me almost cringe with incredulity was “What I like about India”. Almost all the things you like about India are precisely things I would say are most wrong about Indian society today. Since there are so many things I would want to point out lets just take one.
The fact that Indians lose their virginity at a very high age isn’t so very much a feather in India’s cap as you make it out to be. Though I no way endorse teenage sex and pregnancies, the Indian way out of this conundrum creates more problems than it solves. Pre-marital and extra-marital sex in India remains a huge taboo. Women still are thought to have lost their “honour” if they lose their virginity before marriage and they more or less forfeit their marriage prospects whereas men don’t face any backlash if they sleep around. Interestingly women lead the way in propagating this gender bias against other women. Normally Indian adults can’t even talk about this subject in without getting embarrassed.
Marriage is still considered the only socially acceptable option for Indian women. Girls from the tenderest ages are allowed to believe that the only future they have is getting married which results in very few of them taking up any career seriously. This I believe is the primary reason for there being only 25 odd girls in my batch of around 600 at my college, IIT-Bombay.
This is why even if all the women you meet are married its still not a good thing as it goes completely against the tenet of equality of opportunities between men and women.
Indian men and honest!! Give me a break. With so may worlds, ranging from medieval to modern, to straddle Indian men as a rule cannot afford luxuries such as honesty.
With thoughts like yours you come across as a pre-war English army colonel. How come you describe yourself as a “left wing radical”??
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Mick Reply:
October 27th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
The last sentence Ambuj is one I’ve been looking for, for a while. As for the Marsala comment I was really referring to the Guarum? kind. I’m not sure if I spelt that correctly. Not Indian movies. You also mention her blog “what I love about India” many years ago in the 1960’s there was a programme on what was the the BBC Home service radio called “Make your self at home” at 7.15am on a Sunday it was devoted Indian music, this programme turned me on to India some 45yrs ago. Bollywood films have some of the most S*** kicking music in the sound tracks. The only problem is I can’t understand a word of it, just like opera but I still love the way the voices complement the music and vis a vis.
Thanks Naomi for drawing attention to the documentary. I don’t think I’ll ever watch it. What good will it serve? What we saw on the telly was spine-chilling enough. But what disturbs me more is the spineless response of my country to such a procative act. It was nothing short of an open war. And all that we did was to give a ‘decent trial’ to Ajmal Kasab. We contiue to feed him, provide legal assistance and make a hero out of him. And then we keep making feeble protests against Pakistan’s role in the dastardly act. We should have shot the guy in public and sent the body to Pakistan on a missile head. We should make Pakistan pay for what they did to us. I hope our defence minister gets to see the doc. It will buttkick him out of his lethargy.
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Mick Reply:
October 27th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
Seems like maybe Mr Obama has kick *** there (Pakistan) judging by whats happening in South Waristan, with a bit of luck they will clean out the Intel service.
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Just what is the matter with you, there was nothing in them worth bothering with after all it had these **** in the same places as Ambuj
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That’s better, for a moment I thought i was going to have to allude to Major Dennis Bloodknock star of the late and lamented Goon Show as he’s the only pre-war English officer type that fits.
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On a more serious note before Naomi writes another, we here in England have had white English home grown terrorists. Once again about 40 years ago there was a couple of intellectual aging students who were fed up with the Tory Govt at the time and things in general and decided to call themselves “The Angry Brigade”. They set off a few amateur bombs and damaged a few places, I don’t think they hurt anyone. But the thing that really pissed the Govt and police off most of all was a bomb at the then Home Secretary’s house, just outside Brentwood Essex. I and my future wife lived a couple of miles from this house. no big deal you will say. Except my future father in law was Ukrainian he had fought with the free Poles at Casino and other places. Anyway he who had been employed since the day of his demob was arrested and questioned about this bomb. Regardless of the fact that because the Russian wouldn’t or couldn’t produce a birth certificate for him he was stateless so he had to present himself to the police station that he was being questioned in every 6mths. So perhaps you can see that this sort of thing coupled with 30yrs of IRA bombs I and other English people can be a bit blase about it all. But I think for Indians in general the worst thing is the scum that did that to India didn’t have the bottle to take on a harder target.
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This story appeared in HT Cafe last week. It’s an interview with the man himself - Dan Reed - by HT Cafe reporter Rochelle Pinto….
Waiting to be released
Dan Reed, director of the documentary ‘Terror in Mumbai’ talks about his film on 26/11, which in all probability, might not release in India
Rochelle Pinto
rochelle.pinto@hindustantimes.com
Considering the sensitive subject matter, weren’t you worried about your own safety and that of your crew?
Road safety was my prime concern in Mumbai… the streets are wild! Apart from that, I felt pretty safe, compared to places like the Balkans and Russia where I’ve shot my documentaries.
How did you manage to trace the victims, specially those who were involved in the CST attacks?
It was long and time-consuming. I compiled this information from casualty lists, hospital lists, newspaper reports and word of mouth and fed it to my researcher, Nandan Kini. Armed with only the skinniest information, he located them. His strike rate was quite good, about 30 per cent. Some others I traced with the help of my own connections, people who trusted and vouched for me, to their friends.
Did you face any hostility from the victims about being interviewed?
The wealthier victims - those from the Taj and Oberoi - proved to be the most reluctant. The Turkish couple, who survived the service-staircase massacre at the Oberoi, were brave and felt it was their duty to talk about the incident to let the world know what it means to be at the mercy of these young jihadis. I admire them for it.
The footage of the policemen running away at CST station was rather shocking. Were you worried that the government might order an inquiry into how you got possession of those tapes?
Extracts from the video file containing that particular piece of CCTV footage had been aired in parts, nationally and internationally. It showed Jullu Yadhav heroically trying to fire at Kasab. The rifle jammed and Yadhav had to duck behind a pillar. But another section of the tape showed most of the railway cops running away, before another hero, the late Inspector Shashank Shinde, tried unsuccessfully, to rally some resistance. I guess the other media organisations didn’t check the entire tape or chose not to broadcast images of the police running away.
Why wasn’t the documentary released in India?
First, the material has to be cleared for use. Necessary insurances and indemnities have to be obtained for the UK sales company to make a legitimate sale. The cost, even without any profit, far exceeds what any local channel will offer. So we’ve reached a deadlock. It’s a crying shame.
Since the video is available on Youtube, many Indians have already accessed it. Have their reactions been very different from that of the foreign viewers?
The reactions from Indians have been far more intense. Their country had been under attack and it was their policemen, hotels and trains. Many have praised the film and expressed gratitude for its honest approach. Some South Mumbai residents felt that there was too much footage on the railway station victims and I should have concentrated more on the wealthy victims because they had been singled out. That made me sad.
Would you say that you achieved what you set out to do?
My goal was to tell the inside story of the most craftily designed terrorist attack since 9/11. I succeeded beyond my expectations - the recordings of the gunmen speaking on their cellphones, the Kasab tape, the CCTV from the hotels… No terrorist attack in history has been so well documented, ever. It was a historic opportunity to get into the minds of the terrorists and their modus operandi. But I didn’t want to lose sight of the victims and their experiences, whether it was Reshma Kiani who lay there for 16 hours, grievously wounded next to her dying friends and cousin, or 12-year-old Afroz Ansari, who lost his mother and father at the CST station massacre.
There were rumours of the movie coming up for film festival nominations. Are they true?
I think my colleagues and I deserve awards for this film! We worked like maniacs. I hardly slept for five months.
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