60 hours later
…it’s over.
At approximately 7.30am this morning, the Taj operation finally came to something of a close. Reports are that one terrorist has been caught and three have been killed there. There have been some casualties among the NSG and the NSG chief JK Dutt has urged guests in the hotel to part their curtains so that the NSG can tell from the outside who is, well, kosher. Ultimately, the terrorists were smoked out and there seems to be some footage of a man coming out of one of the ground floor windows. Two terrorists were found inside, holding AK47 guns.
The fire at the Taj is under control, we’re told, but the smoke that’s billowing out of there doesn’t offer much hope for the interior of the building.
Hand grenades and AK47s have been recovered and the sanitisation process continues. The hotel has 500-odd rooms so this is going to take time.
News reports now claim that the terrorist apprehended at the Taj confessed to intending to blow up the Taj. The death toll, at last count, was 155.
Meanwhile, the Mumbai Mirror has an exclusive this morning with the terrorist who was captured on the first day at CST. Azam Amir Kasav is a 21-year-old from Faridkot (in Pakistan occupied Kashmir). Kasav and a colleague were captured at Girgaum. His colleague was killed while he sustained injuries to his hand. Apparently he played dead but was discovered when the bodies were being taken to the morgue. At first he wasn’t cooperating and then the sight of his friend/ colleague’s dead body made him break down. According to Kasav, the team that came from Karachi to Mumbai by sea killed two coast guards who spotted them near Porbandar, Gujarat. At Colaba, they broke up into groups of two - two for the Taj, two for Nariman House, two for the Trident and two for CST. At the end of his police grilling, Kasav told medical personnel that he no longer wanted to live so could they please kill him.
Perhaps I’m just a little too cynical, but a lot of this doesn’t add up for me. It seems odd that someone on so professional a mission pretended to play dead and then crumpled at the sight of a dead body. Also, two coast guards were killed and there are no reports of this? The ammunition he says they were given seems to be less than what has been used over the past few days. There were 25 blasts at Nariman House and 16 in the Taj till about Thursday and firing went on almost continuously at the three locations. Not just that, grenades have been found in each of the locations so they clearly didn’t use up all their supplies. It also sounds ridiculous that only two men were able to hold off NSG, the Army and naval commandos for some 58 hours. Finally, the fact that he spoke so easily - reason: “I want to live” - is just unbelievable.
on Friday, November 28th, 2008, 8:49 pm in Azam Amir Kasav, Current affairs, Media, Mumbai, Terror! › 
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Do not rush into post-mortems right away. The Journalist who wrote the piece is perhaps as much informed as you or me and is trying to sensationalize the story. Wait for the smoke to clear and more facts to emerge.
Apparently this is the same terrorist whose photograph was repeatedly shown on all the TV channels. Couldn’t he at least wait to shed his puppy fat before indulging in mass murder?
According to the Belfast Telegraph, armed police in Mumbai cowered and hid rather than engage this very terr and his buddies as they went about their slaughterfest:
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/article14086308.ece
Read it all — especially the last three grafs. An absolute blood-boiler.
random notes
– cricket series is called off becos pietersen doesnt want to die. is being urged by oldtimers (botham et al) to keep the show going rather than let the terrorists win.
– anjem chowdhary disciple of omar bakri in england thinks that britons who died in mumbai deserved to die.
– karkare and other dead had a public send-off the other day. lots of eulogies.
– ghulam noon the curry king was also in town the last time mumbai was bombed. incidentally when he immigrted to uk in the sventies his first resto was bombay halwa.
– the movie star blogs have been publicising their reactions. local press is noting the reactions from bachan and amr khan
– despite probing for anger, even among ardent nationalists, i have observed a surprising calmness. the anger is at pakistan to some extent, and i have been referred to some alt-movies that talk about how jihadis are created. this is a far more mature nation than canada or the USA. yes… i am aware of godra and 1984 and mumbai and all… but still the equanimity was surprising to me. a million and one mutinies perhaps irks but does not fluster the indian elephant
– local newspapers mentioned barack’s call to singh.
– there are calls for the creation of something like homeland security to centralize anti-terror activity. no calls for gitmo yet.
What’s the deal with this Anjem Chowdhury being given residence in UK ? Have the British completely lost their minds. Sharia law, sociopathic Islamic hate mongers. This is the country that ruled the world ? What a joke.
You guys should check out the Guardian UK, they’ve given a soapbox for every Pakistani partisan intellectual type they could get their hands on. It never ceases to amaze me how nationalistic and incapable of self criticism they are in contrast with our self flagellating brain trust. I wish we could trade our eggheads for theirs. Not to mention how much more suave and sophisticated their foreign service is. I mean they are actually spouting BS like “we are also victims of terrorism”. LoL- it’s like a guy burns his hands while trying to flambe you and expects (and gets !) sympathy. That Nobel laureate muppet Amartya Sen has started to use the same words almost verbatim. Must be a jihadi jedi mind trick they learnt at LSE from the Omar Sheikh Sayed Prof. of “Real Time Historical Revisionism”
Do you find the third degree a non-starter even in these circumstances?
random notes
– israeli newspapers are covering moshe and the maid (sorry dont have her name) diligently. a very desi brown israeli lady came on over on aaj tak.
– war drums are louder
– priyanka invokes indira
– shivraj patil the home minister is a tool and seems to have been ‘left out’ of a senior meeting with sonia, manmohan, omar and rahul.
– random bolly starlets appeared on tv wanting to torture the suspects
– shujaa (isi head) is not coming. pakistan revoked the offer.
– the newspapers are pointing to summary proof the terroriss originated in pakistan - the grenades are chinese made and stock suply in the pakistani army. the satellite phone was used for these calls to pakistan. ajmal claims to have received orders from pakistan.
The standard line of most opinion writers is that there has been a “failure of intelligence”. This could not be more wrong. I have read reports of RAW intercepting the sat phone that the terrorists were talking while in sea with their handler in Pakistan. The intelligence even knew who they were talking to. You cant get any better intelligence than that.
The problem in India is failure of leadership. Manmohan Singh comes out with a national speech in which he appears moribund and completely uninspiring. I am not a fan of George Bush, but after 9/11 when he visited the ground zero site and impromptu made a speech, that showed true leadership. India is missing a leader and has been missing a true leader for a long time.
Arent you guys reading the times of India? they seem to have very good information on what’s going on.
The only thing they could have done with the intelligence would have been to get the indian navy to follow them at sea. why they didn’t do this is a question that will be answered later.
do you guys think manmohan will be voted out as a result of this debacle?
It’s unbelievable? Why so?
They were made to believe that they are invincible, and that Indians - Hindoos - are cowards. Reality it him hard and he wants to live in the real world for some more time.
If that’s unbelievable so is the whole event.