The sanguine saga of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, the successful extradition of its mastermind Tahawwur Hussain Rana—more than 16 years after the heinous crime—and his subsequent arrest by the National Investigation Agency make for a fascinating thread in bringing out the rot in the Indian administrative-political system and the perceptible change it’s undergoing.
First, let’s recall. During 2008, terror groups were hitting India without a break. The fateful year opened with a deadly strike on the CRPF camp in Rampur, Uttar Pradesh, attributed to Lashkar-e-Taiba. It was followed by nine more terror attacks by October-end. On October 30, before noon, several markets in Assam were rocked by deadly explosions. Eighteen bombs went off, claiming 81 lives and leaving 470 injured. Succinctly put, bomb blasts and the resulting mayhem were the new normals.
But what followed in November would overshadow all such terror acts—in India and the rest of the world—in terms of the sheer incredulity of its planning, coordination, brutality, the number of human lives lost and the excruciating trauma it caused its victims and the rest of India. The macabre drama lasted four days—November 26 to 29—and was marked by anxiety and palpable nervousness all over the country.
While the security forces grappled with the terrorists ensconced in various locations in Mumbai, all of India was seething with an impotent rage, mortified embarrassment and insecurity. The ordinary Indian was spooked; he realised how vulnerable and helpless his country was in the face of organised Islamic terror.
Ten terrorists from the Pakistan-based outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba, with logistical and tactical support from the Pakistani military and its intelligence agency ISI, infiltrated Mumbai via the sea route under the cover of darkness on November 26. The system was compromised as fully armed desperadoes managed to sneak into their target locations without any questions asked. Over the subsequent three days, the infiltrators coordinated attacks at eight key locations, including the iconic Taj Hotel and Chhatrapati Shivaji railway terminus.
Eventually, nine of the 10 terrorists were neutralised by Indian forces, while one—Ajmal Kasab—was captured alive due to the supreme sacrifice of Mumbai police constable Tukaram Omble. Kasab was later convicted of waging war against India, sentenced to death, and executed in 2012. The Mumbai onslaught claimed 166 innocent lives, including 24 foreigners. Over 300 people were injured.
Two individuals—Canadian citizen Rana and American David Coleman Headley, both of Pakistani parentage—were used by their Pakistani handlers to plan and execute the Mumbai terror episode.
The US authorities arrested Headley and Rana for plotting strikes in India and Denmark. While Headley pleaded guilty and turned approver, providing a detailed account of the 26/11 conspiracy, Rana continued to deny knowledge of any terror activities.
In 2011, Rana was convicted in a US court of conspiracy to support terrorism in the Denmark plot and of providing material support to Lashkar-e-Taiba. Earlier, India had been granted access to interrogate Headley, who was convicted in this case and is currently serving a 35-year prison sentence in the US. India had long sought Rana’s extradition. In 2020, the NIA formally requested it, citing his involvement in the 26/11 conspiracy.
This sordid episode raises several disturbing questions. Why did the terrorists have a free run all these years, mostly from 1993 onwards? We must not forget that on March 12, 1993, Mumbai was rocked by 13 car bombs that left 257 dead and 1,400 injured. Four days later, Kolkata was devastated by bomb explosions. Then onwards, it was a never-ending trail of blood and death. Between the Mumbai blasts of 1993 and 26/ 11, the country suffered over 50 terror strikes.
Why was the Indian state helpless in combating terror during this period? Since 2015, barring Jammu & Kashmir, Punjab and the Maoist-affected districts, the rest of the country has largely been peaceful. Public spaces—markets, railway stations, airports and places of worship—no longer reverberate with warnings of possible terror attacks on the public address system, as was the wont earlier.
By October 2009, following Kasab’s arrest and the confessions of Headley and Rana, it was established that the 26/11 attacks were the result of a coordinated effort by Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistani army and ISI. Yet, shockingly, in December 2010, Congress leader and current Rajya Sabha member Digvijaya Singh launched a book titled 26/11: An RSS Conspiracy, holding the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh responsible for the blasts.
Rakesh Maria, the then Mumbai police commissioner, wrote in his memoir, Let Me Say It Now, that had Kasab not been captured alive, there was a deliberate plan to attribute the 26/11 attacks to “Hindus… Kasab’s body would have been found with an identity card bearing a fictitious Hindu name”.
Pakistan hatching a conspiracy to raise a bogey of ‘Hindu terror’—to cover its gory tracks and to set ‘secular Hindus’ against ‘communal’ Hindus—to push the country into the vortex of civil strife is understandable. But why should any Indian become an accomplice of such machination?
There was a method in the UPA’s madness. It was partly motivated by a desire to court the Muslim vote bank. The other part of this gameplan was to concoct a ‘Hindu/saffron terror’ paradigm, paste it on the BJP-RSS, turn these two organisations into global pariahs and wreck political vendetta on them without looking bad or undemocratic.
The 26/11 terror attack was not the only instance where facts were manipulated. On October 27, 2013, when a series of eight bomb blasts in Patna targeted the then Gujarat chief minister and BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi—resulting in six fatalities—senior Congress leaders, including Digvijaya Singh, indirectly held the BJP responsible.
A similar narrative was constructed in the February 14, 1998 Coimbatore serial blasts, where 12 explosions intended to target BJP stalwart L K Advani killed 58 people. In that case, too, the Congress chose to blame the RSS-BJP despite an explicit jihadist nature of the attack.
Isn’t the term ‘saffron terror’ a red herring to divert attention from the actual perpetrators—who preach and practice terror as a part of their ideological framework and consider violence a legitimate tool to achieve their objective?
(Views are personal)
Balbir Punj
Former Chairman, Indian Institute of Mass Communication