The Siege: 68 Hours Inside the Taj Hotel (7 page)

It was Kelly who had suggested an autumn trip to India, a chance to take a breath before Will’s Pret A Manger pitch. They also needed to think about where they were headed. They spent most of the holiday in the southern Goan resort of Palolem, where the array of palm-shaded bars and cheap guest houses attracted a large contingent of stoners, Will skinning up while reading and listening to music.

In his rucksack was a biography of the tortured father of computer sciences, Alan Turing, and
A Mathematician’s Apology
, G. H. Hardy’s requiem for his own fading career. An armchair obsessive,
Will got immersed in things. When he wasn’t reading, he kicked a football around with local kids on the beach or filmed sunsets, train journeys and markets with an old Super 8. He bought Indian versions of the Ken and Barbie dolls, with plans to use them to film a stop-animation short. Will and Kelly were cruising. ‘We were really good at doing fuck all,’ he told his brother.

Wednesday, 26 November 2008, 6 p.m.

A ten-minute drive across town from the Taj to the Trident-Oberoi, which Karambir Kang liked to call ‘the second-best hotel in town’, the Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) for Zone 1, Vishwas Nangre Patil, was having a gruelling day. He calculated that he was still only halfway through an eight-hour security review conducted by the Special Protection Group, ahead of a visit to the city by the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, on 28 November.

He reminded himself, as he stifled a yawn, that this was a small price to pay. Policing Zone 1 was all about the glory. It covered the city’s smartest hotels, apartments and villas, Mumbai’s historical heart, as well as the central backpacker district of Colaba. Zone 1 also came with a filing cabinet full of drawbacks: VIP visits (like the Prime Minister’s), foreign dignitaries jetting in, and mouthy well-to-do residents. These were people who earned in a day what a dishonest policeman could acquire in a career, and what a straightforward copper would never earn.

With the sleeves of his well-pressed shirt precisely rolled, Patil sported a tidy moustache and a square, stubborn jaw. He had been a surprising choice for Zone 1 when he got the job five months before. A native Marathi speaker from isolated Kokrud, a village of temples and farmers some 220 miles to the south, he had risen above his upbringing as a country boy. In a subcontinent where names mean everything, the Patils were traditionally landowners and warriors, and Vishwas Patil, the son of a renowned weightlifter, spent most of his childhood thinking he would join the army. He had
been ‘crazy about uniforms’ since he was a boy, joining the National Cadet College in his teens, winning a gold medal for shooting. But having topped his class, he defied the expectations of his father to gain a Master’s degree before sitting the elite civil service exams in 1997. He joined the Indian Police Service, his first posting in a rural spot where he understood the people like they were his family.

The boy from Kokrud had assumed he would not get so far. The force in Maharashtra and elsewhere was led by privileged officers like Mumbai’s Commissioner Gafoor, the city’s police chief, the son of a
nawab
from Hyderabad. But in a little under a decade the outsider Patil had got himself noticed, shaking things up with high-profile campaigns, challenging privilege and appeasing conservatives, being promoted to the cherished DCP position in South Mumbai in June 2008. And now he was here at the top table, alongside the most senior cops in the city, including Commissioner Gafoor and Rakesh Maria, the legendary chief of Crime Branch.

As he sat listening to his seniors, Patil was becoming deeply worried. What gnawed away at him was how little attention anyone was paying to a number of warnings that had been staring him in the face since he started here, and that, if taken seriously, would surely have put the city on a war footing, irrespective of whether the PM was coming.

He had received the initial tip-off in his first week, a report that the Leopold Café, a popular tourist hangout near the Taj, was on a terrorist hitlist. Over the following days, looking through intelligence chits, Patil had discovered a disturbing pattern of warnings that were frequent and detailed. His predecessors had received dozens of classified bulletins about potential terrorist strikes on the city. But, as far as he could see, the intelligence agencies and the police had ignored them.

The first gobbet had arrived in August 2006 and stated that Lashkar-e-Toiba, an influential Pakistani jihadi organization that had cut its teeth sending Muslim insurgents to fight the Indian security forces in divided Kashmir, was ‘making preparations’ for a
major assault on Mumbai. Several five-star hotels were mentioned as targets, including the Trident-Oberoi and the Taj. Since then there had been twenty-five further alerts, many of them delivered by the CIA to the Indian government’s external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing, and passed on to India’s domestic Intelligence Bureau.

Patil had pondered the origin of the information. When he examined the detail, it seemed clear that the US was tapping into a significant source, the welter of leads drawing a picture of someone right inside the notoriously closed Lashkar, an outfit that everyone believed was funded by Pakistani intelligence.

It was not as though terror was new to Mumbai. Over the last few decades, the city had witnessed a dozen serious attacks in which more than 500 had been killed and almost 2,000 injured. After the most recent carnage in July 2006, when a series of train blasts had killed 181, the Maharashtra government had constituted a study group. Late by many months, it had still not filed any recommendations.

Patil could see that all previous incidents consisted of concealed bombs left on bicycles and scooters, abandoned in market places and outside prominent buildings. Some of the materiel was homemade, derived from potassium chlorate purloined from textile mills, where it was used as a colour fixative. Other blasts relied on
black soap
, as locals called the sticky military explosive RDX, smuggled into the country from Pakistan or the Middle East. But the more recent intelligence suggested Lashkar was plotting something new, a live raid on the city. Three warnings specifically mentioned the use of
fidayeen
, meaning guerrillas armed with grenades and AK-47s who fought to the death, inflicting heavy casualties before being overcome. Lashkar had deployed this strategy in Indian-administered Kashmir to deadly effect.

Eleven warnings suggested the plan would involve multiple simultaneous attacks. Six warnings pointed to a seaborne infiltration, which would be a first in India. Zone 1 lay at the narrowest part of the city peninsula and was accessible from Back Bay to the west and the harbour and docks to the east. Patil had contacted the coast
guard and asked what was being done to beef up security. ‘Nothing,’ he was told. He called the DCP responsible for the port, who confided that he was so short of funding that he did not have a single high-speed boat to chase waterborne suspects. He had taken to hiring fishing vessels using his own money to get around his patch.

Unsure of how to proceed, Patil sought advice from one of his close friends on the force, DCP Rajvardhan Sinha, the deputy in charge at SB2, the wing of Special Branch responsible for monitoring foreigners. Patil and Sinha, who was known universally as Rajvardhan, had both graduated into the police service as batch-mates in 1997, although their career paths had taken them in different directions. Rajvardhan had been born in the fractious northern Indian state of Bihar, and his first superintendent posting was among the toughest any policeman could imagine: Gadchiroli, a town in the wild east of Maharashtra. It was part of the so-called Red Corridor, a stronghold of Naxalite rebels. Named after a village in West Bengal where the movement started, the Naxals had purportedly taken up guns to overthrow corrupt landlords, protecting local tribes from exploitation and stopping land grabs by corporations. The police were caught in the middle, with some officers enraged at what they saw as having to do the government’s dirty work, while others took the opportunity to become combat-ready.

Rajvardhan, who had a dramatic duelling scar running diagonally across the top of his nose, was in the latter camp. ‘You get that killer instinct when you are in the jungle,’ he joked with his colleagues. In his first week his convoy had been hit by an IED, trucks and jeeps spun on to their roofs, the men hosed down with bullets in an ambush as they fled into the forests. The cool-headed Rajvardhan had led them to safety on foot, without losing a man. His advice to Patil when he learned about the massing intelligence in Mumbai was to take the warnings seriously. ‘If the shit hits the fan,’ he told his friend, ‘you’ll be the one who has to deal with it.’

Patil had started nightly meetings for his brightest officers, giving them specific tasks in key locations. He personally visited several places named as targets. In July 2008, he began focusing on the
unregulated fishermen’s colony at the southern end of Back Bay called Badhwar Park. It was close to the World Trade Centre, the Trident-Oberoi and the Taj hotel. Patil wrote to the Commandant Coast Guards, Western Region HQ, warning: ‘If anti-social/terrorist/anti-national elements desire to attack by rocket launcher, these boats can be used.’

Then, the Intelligence Bureau had received two more date-specific warnings about the Taj. One concerned a possible attack on 24 May and the other on 11 August, both prompted by tip-offs from a source in Pakistan said to be inside Lashkar. A more political officer might have avoided taking on the country’s most glamorous hotel, steered by one of the subcontinent’s most powerful industrialist families, the Tatas. Patil piled straight in, demanding a meeting on 12 August and spending nine hours with the security chief, Sunil Kudiyadi. In his subsequent report to Commissioner Gafoor, the Zone 1 DCP concluded: ‘Overall, the management has done very little to adapt the hotel to the changing security environment in the city.’

Patil was not a hotelier, and had no idea about the need to beguile guests. What he saw was a historic building ringed by a large number of unsecured, undefendable entrances and easily assailable porous walls. There was CCTV but it was ambiguously labelled and poorly organized. There was an alcohol
godown
(store) on the third floor, which was prohibited because of the fire risk. The systems in place to detect weapons and explosives being smuggled into the hotel were slapdash. No blast barriers or screens were installed, meaning the Taj remained vulnerable to a drive-by or drive-in suicide bomber. Patil told Kudiyadi: ‘Don’t think about what has happened in this city. Think about what they’ve
not
yet done. If they have set charges on motorbikes, look up to the skies.’ Patil wished to create a fortress, while the Taj needed to remain a theatre.

After the 12 August meeting Patil had decided to make things official. He issued written advice to Kudiyadi, copying in the General Manager, Karambir Kang. Given the building pattern of US-supplied
warnings, he recommended that the hotel install blast barriers, armed police pickets and snipers on the roof. The advice was politely rebuffed: guests wanted to be greeted by brightly uniformed
chobedars
(doormen), not a SWAT team that would undermine the hotel’s luxury image.

He made some progress after 20 September 2008, when a massive truck bomb devastated the five-star Marriott hotel in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, killing more than fifty people. As grim scenes from the blast site were broadcast across India, Patil secured a meeting with the Taj management. Over the next few days, he drew up twenty-six emergency measures, including police gunmen overlooking the main porch and the deployment of between six and nine armed officers below. He recommended a security grille for the glass-fronted Northcote side door at the southern end of the Palace, automatic locking for other entrances and the permanent closure of the Palace lobby doors overlooking Back Bay. All staff, guests and visitors should enter the hotel through one choke point, the Tower lobby, where there would be metal detectors, bag checks and pat-downs. By the second week of October, the Taj had implemented many of these suggestions and Patil went on leave, with the hotel pledging to complete the rest.

Now at the security meeting Patil recommended something similar be done at the Trident-Oberoi, where the PM would be speaking. ‘The city is ripe for an attack,’ he warned. The intelligence services knew it too. One recent warning from the CIA commented that ‘Lashkar is equipped and ready to launch a broadside against the city.’

7 p.m. – room 316, Palace wing

Back in the Taj, Kelly was still in the bathroom, ‘doing girly things’, as Will watched the darkening sky turn purple. He banged on the door. ‘We won’t have time for shopping and a beer.’ She emerged in a strapless maxi-dress and sandals, with blood-red nails and lipstick to match. Perfect.

They set off for the shops of Colaba Causeway, a crowded strip
two blocks behind the hotel. They were here for such a short time that they wanted to sample it all. But after the reverie of the beach, and the sterility of the hotel lobby, it was far too manic, and seeing a free table inside the Leopold Café they dived in. A Mumbai institution, it looked like a cross between a Victorian dispensary and an ice cream parlour, and had been in the hands of the same Parsi family since 1871.

It was happy hour. ‘Lets have beers and jalapenos,’ Will suggested, loving the buzz. They drained a couple of pints, talked about eating there and then ruled it out, sticking to the plan of an elegant dinner at the Taj. Meandering back, they came up Best Marg and entered the pristine hotel through the Northcote entrance. ‘No security here,’ Will ribbed Kelly. ‘If you wanted to raid this place you would come this way.’ Walking along the chilled marble corridor towards the Palace lobby, passing empty boutiques and a display case of illustrious former guests – Neil Armstrong, Yehudi Menuhin and Gamal Abdel Nasser – they stopped at the poolside bar, and had another drink, served by an amicable steward, Adil Irani.