In the beginning, they were 32. A squad of suicide bombers raised in Pakistan, they were taught how to make bombs, withstand interrogation, and fight to their death.
They were whittled down to 10, and on a Saturday morning in November of 2008, they set sail from Karachi with coordinates plotted on a global positioning set. Once in Mumbai, they went on a killing spree, leaving 163 dead, all the while receiving detailed instructions and pep talks from their handlers across the border.
The dossier contains photographs of materials found on the fishing trawler, from a bottle of Mountain Dew soda packaged in Karachi to pistols that bore the markings of a gun manufacturer in Peshawar to a Pakistani-made matchbox, detergent powder, and shaving cream, called “Touchme.”
Although the dossier takes pains not to blame serving or former officials in Pakistan’s army or spy agency, Indian officials have consistently hinted at their complicity, at least in training the commando-style fighters who carried it out. Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, upped the ante but stopped short of making a direct accusation. “There is enough evidence to show that, given the sophistication and military precision of the attack, it must have had the support of some official agencies in Pakistan,” he said.
The dossier, along with a power-point presentation made to diplomats, narrates a journey of zeal, foibles and careful planning, one whose blow-by-blow media coverage was followed by handlers, believed to be in Pakistan, and used in turn to caution the gunmen on the ground about the movement of Indian security forces and motivate them to keep fighting.
“Everything is being recorded by the media. Inflict the maximum damage. Keep fighting. Don’t be taken alive,” says a caller to a gunman inside the Oberoi Hotel close to 4 a.m. on the first day of the three-day siege.
“Throw one of two grenades at the Navy and police teams, which are outside,” came one instruction to the gunmen inside the Taj Mahal hotel.
“Keep two magazines and three grenades aside and expend the rest of your ammunition,” went another set of instructions to the attackers inside Nariman House, which housed an Orthodox Jewish center, on the second evening, with a directive to “conclude” the operation the next morning.
The telephone conversations, selected transcripts of which have been compiled in the dossier, chronicle a steady exchange between the attackers in Mumbai and their counselors.
At the Taj, they are asked whether they have set the hotel on fire; one of the attackers says he is preparing a mattress for that purpose. At the Oberoi, one of them asks whether to spare women (“kill them,” comes the terse reply) and Muslims (he is told to release them and kill the rest, all the while keeping the phone line open so their interlocutors can hear the gunfire). At Nariman House, a residential building which housed a Jewish community center, they are told how to damage India’s standing with a key ally, Israel.
“Keep in mind that the hostages are of use only as long as you do not come under fire because of their safety,” a handler, identified only as Wassi, exhorts. “If you are still threatened, then don’t saddle yourself with the burden of the hostages. Immediately kill them.”
“Yes, we shall do accordingly,” the gunman inside Nariman House replies. “God willing.”
“If the hostages are killed, it will spoil relations between India and Israel,” Wassi continues.
According to the investigation, the 10 men boarded a small boat in Karachi at 8 a.m. on Nov. 22, sailed a short distance before boarding a bigger carrier called the Al-Husseini, believed to be owned by Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, a key operative of a banned Pakistan-based terrorist group called Lashkar-e-Taiba. The following day, the 10 men took over an Indian fishing trawler, called the MV Kuber, killed four of its crew members, spared its captain, Amar Singh Solanki, and sailed 550 nautical miles across the Arabian Sea.
Each man had two-hour watch duties on board. Each carried individual weapon packs: a Kalashnikov, a 9-millimeter pistol, ammunition, hand grenades and a bomb, weighing 8 kilograms and containing a military-grade explosive called RDX, steel ball bearings and a timer with instructions inscribed in Urdu.
By 4 p.m. on Nov. 26, the trawler approached the shores of Mumbai. The leader of the crew, identified by Indian investigators as Ismail Khan, 25, from a town called Dera Ismail Khan in the Northwest Frontier Province, contacted their handlers and received instructions. When darkness set in, they killed the captain of the trawler, Mr. Solanki. Then they boarded a motorized dinghy, the engine of which, Indian investigators say, bore marks from a Lahore-based importing company. They reached Mumbai at about 8:30 p.m., and in five teams of two, set upon their targets: the city’s busiest railway station known as Victoria Terminus, a tourist haunt called Café Leopold, the Jewish center in Nariman House, and two luxury hotels, the Taj and Oberoi.
They made one mistake. As they were leaving the fishing trawler, they told their handlers later on the phone, the waves were high and another boat was approaching, which they feared was an Indian Navy ship. They left behind Ismail Khan’s satellite phone; it was recovered by Indian investigators and its photograph included in the dossier. A GPS, also recovered from the trawler suggests they kept a safe distance of at least 60 kilometers from Indian shore until they got closer to Mumbai.
The gunmen seemed to use Indian mobile phones during the course of the attacks. Their counselors, 6 in all, used Voice-Over-Internet-Protocol numbers, including one from an American company called “Callphonex.”
The telephone calls stop, inexplicably, about 24 hours into the attacks.
The last call transcript in the dossier is at 10:26 p.m. on Nov. 27, between a gunman inside Nariman House and his interlocutor. “Brother you have to fight,” says the caller. “This is a matter of the prestige of Islam.”
By the morning of Nov. 29, Indian forces had killed 9 of the fighters. Blood tests on the terrorists indicated that they consumed cocaine and LSD during the attacks, to sustain their energy and stay awake for 50 hours. Police says that they found syringes on the scenes of the attacks. There were also indications that they had been consuming steroids.
And then, there was one: the sole survivor, Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, is in the custody of the Mumbai police. His interrogation turned up the most interesting detail. He was part of a cadre of 32 would-be suicide bombers, that was later joined by an additional three men. A team of six went to Indian-administered Kashmir, Mr. Kasab told his interrogators.
Ten were kept in isolation for more than three months, in a house near Karachi, until they were instructed to go to Mumbai.
The dossier says nothing about what happened to the remaining trainees. Whether or where they will strike next remains a mystery.
