Me Mumbaikar’s Blog

Have you ever been on Mumbai Darshan? It has 23 Points of famous spots in Mumbai like Gateway of India, Sachin Tendulkar’s residence, Amitabh Bachans residence etc., now Mumbai Darshan has 3 more new locations

1. Oberoi Towers
2. Taj Mahal Hotel
3. Nariman House

The terror tourism was inaugurated by our honarable Cheif Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh , his son Ritesh Deshmukh and his friend (read: new mentor / director of his next film) Ram Gopal Varma.
As Mumbaikars after few weeks we are going to remember these locations as a part of Terror Tourism, you know why , because we will have something more to talk about, we might be discussing how many runs Dhoni needs to take to complete a certain record, will sachin tendulkar play today or not. If not any of these our Media people are good enough to give us a spicy story of some bollywood love affair or something related to some minister etc.,

Our memories are short lived, we are not going to remember even the names of the people who died protecting us from these terrorists. Can any of us name them without searching for their names in blog and search engines? No matter how ever bad our security agencies weapons are, but still these people who had sacrificed they lives to protect / save mumbai will be forgotten in short span of time.
Terror Tourism will be the only way we might remember then, that too because some political party will make a scribe at these location and inscribe the names of the people who lost their lives in these locations (i am not sure even this happen).

First few days of terror tourism, its with curiosity of what happened there, next few days we might want to show our friends or family what happened there, might even walk up to some wall to show the bullet marks.
We all are planning to meet on 3rd December infront of these terror tourism location, so that we can have the view of these locations and get some media coverage…this is what thats going to happen on 3rd December.  We will not be adding any more value, none of our voices will be heard, for media its just a spicy news and moment to add value to their TRP by showing the live coverage…no actions will be there in the results of the protests or requests….

Our system need radical change, and it has to happen now. Boycott the tax payments, they can arrest if 10 people are not paying taxes, what if 1 million people are not going to pay their taxes, do we have jails to keep so many people? Protest and make a point in such a way that it will hit them where it hurt them the most. Our government is not poor, let them form a committee and show us the progress and the implementation of the security plans, then we will pay our taxes…can we do this?
Even I will forget about it in next few weeks, then what taking my friend / family to terror tourism will be my hobby , as with this kind of phase and environments, we might have few more terror tourism spots in near future…

There are quite a few mistakes from the government , if not the entire attack , we could have saved some lives.

1. As per the media sources and the points agreed by various defense agencies in India, there was some solid information about the attack. To this our local security agencies response was , we were not aware when they were going to attack and how many are going to be there, all we know was Taj was under threat.  So what do you think the terrorists are going to tell you about the travel plans, so that you can go and catch them.

Mumbai is always a soft-target for the terror events, all the terrorist know about this, they know if they hit Mumbai, the pain will be reflected to the entire nation. Mumbai is also a breeding ground for gangsters, and these gangsters can help these terrorists in logistics need to make their objective successful one…Mumbai is a very good healer, but its not a good defender when it comes to terrorists attacks or as a matter of fact any calamity.

2. Commandos reached the location only after 8-10 hours of the siege incident. How can our government plan like this? Why the commandos reached late ? Our government’s response is , A.K Antony (Minister in charge of securities) has asked for 200 Commandos, so we had to organize all 200 Commandos before sending them across…Cant they send these commandos in batch of 40-50?

3. Preparation part, I think this is the area where our government and security agencies had failed very badly. There was no specific information, they have not done any study about how many terrorists are there, what is the hostage situation, are they using the hostages as human shield , detailed plan of the building etc., nothing. there were very very less informed about these things, in this area terrorists were too good for our commandos, so it took 50+ hours for them to fight 3-4 terrorists (in Taj Hotel).
As a common man if we could think of these things, why being combat specialists our commando team failed, if you take the victims account, 90% of them had not seen any terrorists, all of them heard gun short fired and some rooms are burning…those who had seen the terrorists is not fortunate enough to be alive to tell the tale…..They have not literarily taken every one as hostage, instead the people who had trapped inside assumed themselves as hostage…and the few whom they have actually taken as hostage were killed by them, as they had no plans to keep them alive or negotiate with the government.

It was an easy see-through point that , these terrorists meant business…no mercy, no negotiations…just kill and terrorize the environment…The commandos could have invested couple of extra hours , use air-drop methods, morphine gas, multiple entries at the same time and then try to corner these terrorists. Instead they used the main entry as a normal law respecting citizen and trying to capture them…and during an interview one commando also mentioned that, the terrorists were fully aware of the building plans and secret passages in the building which we were not aware of…isn’t this a failure from the planning front?

3. Our government doesnt have strict anti-terror laws,  our actions speaks we are very very soft on terrorism. If one terrorist comes and bombs your parliament,  even after giving him death sentence , you havent hanged him.  If this is the message you are sending out, then even a child of some unknown country can attack you,  we will not do anything about it. What are you waiting for ? We should have strict anti-terror laws, you can even forgive a rapist (just for the words flow i have used it, i am not asking anyone to forgive a rapist), because hes raping only one women, but you cannot forgive a terrorist as they are raping the entire nation….

4. Vulenrable Waters, even though we have coast guard, naval base everything in Mumbai, why the waters are not monitored , even when the fishermen community had complained about the few suspecting persons with big bags came through sea and left their raft un-attended, why didnt the police reacted to it?

5. MEDIA is the biggest culprit for this entire event and the prolonging the battle with the terrorists.  Every body knew from the 2nd hour of the attack the terrorists were carrying phones with them, and media was giving out running commentary of the events like who entering from which location, going to which window etc., just like a cricket match. Some of the new channels were projecting their reporters in same level of the commandos as they were reporting by putting their life at stake and bringing you the news…hey, first of all we didn’t asked for it, as a responsible media, it was your responsibility to avoid passing information live about the national security.

After 32 hours when few people were rescued, again the media caught that person who had spent 32 hours in the fear of death , asking him about the entire operation , how the commando entered , how they were rescued, on the 34th hour 1 of our commandos was killed and 2 got hurt, because they were going to use the same route to rescue more people…how come these terrorists come to know that the commandos are rescuing people in this manner?  isn’t our media responsible for the death and the injury of the commandos?

They will never say this…!!!!! Our government should have strict law on these kind of media , again this is not the first time….remember Barka Dutt in Kargil War….at that time also we have lot few jawans due to this kind of aggressive , new hungry media…

PS: This blog is not to criticize NSG Commandos or MARCOS or even Mumbai Police on their gallant efforts to help our people , sacrificed their lives to save our city. Instead its a pointer which make common man like us to think about there are certain missing links and uncertain questions which arise in our mind when we walk out of our homes…I salute all the gallant officers involved in the operations to rescue our people and save our city…these questions should not be misinterpreted as criticism

As per the victims trapped inside Taj, the terrorist were taking orders from their masters through satellite phone, the master will tell them what to do…may be the masters are watching these kind of live videos in the TV channels and instructing them where to go and how to go…

Remember Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, Maulana Masood Azhar and Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar who are they?  They are the terrorists released by Indian government in exchange for the release of the passengers and crew of flight IC 814 (hijacked on December 24th 1999). Now lets check out the what effects these terrorist have done to the world after the release…

Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh

He is the one who kidnapped Daniel Pearl in 2002 and killed him ruthlessly by silting the throat. He has also funded the 9/11 Terror attacks , by helping Mohammed Atta (the hijacker) with $100,000 at the instance of General Mahmud.

Maulana Masood Azhar

He is the leader and the founder of the Islamic group Jaish-e-Mohammed, supported by the Pakistani establishment and that country’s spying agency ISI.  Jaish-e-Mohammed later went on to carry out a string of deadly attacks against Indian targets, including the attack on the Indian parliament in December 2001.

Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar

He has held himself responsible for almost 10 dozen murder cases of Kashmiri Pandits (Hindus). He has been operating an unknown militant organization under the clear instructions on Pakistan’s intelligence agency ISI.

India is not learning from its mistakes. every big terrorist tried their hand in India first (although there is a very long and controversial list , don’t want to mention it here) made their mark here before they become world famous by their notorious activities.

Azam Amir Kasav

When Azam Amir Kasav (the one and only terrorist caught by Mumbai Police during Girgaum Chowpatty incident) was having a encounter with Mumbai police along with his colleague Ismail, he saw Ismail was hit badly and died on the spot, then he pretends to be dead. Cops first thought both of them are dead, then during the transport to the hospital, one vigilant cop noticed that this fellow is breathing, that’s how he was arrested, if our vigilant cop hadn’t noticed his heart beat / breathing, he might be slipped out of our hands from the mortuary…

Do we need to release Azam Amir Kasav so that he can bring down the world monuments or terrorize another country or even terrorize our own country?

Do we really need Metro Rail project costing more than 1000+ Crores of rupees? (leave alone the beneficaries and the problems faced by common man, the petrol / gas spend by the common man due to the traffic create by the metro rail construction)

This is not the first time Mumbai being the target for the Terrorists…its always been the primary target let it be Gangwars, Terror attacks etc., When ever some one wants to hurt the nation , hit the economy the first place they attack is Mumbai (previously Bombay). This is a known fact….

Even after this why our constables are still carrying the age old rusty looking 303 Rifles? So that they can be Martyrs in terror attacks?

Do you know Mumbai consolidates 30% of Indian Tax Economy? When the country is earning so much from a single city, isn’t the country’s responsibility to bring in the best of security forces to protect it?

Terrorism is a way of life…just like Hinduism, Jainism etc., we cannot over look the fact, no matter how ever we protect ourselves, but if we have the better security arrangements in place, then we can reduce the collateral damage which happens due to the situations like Mumbai Terror Attacks 26/11….

We rate our Mumbai Police as the second best police force after Scotland Yard…with 303 rifles? Sometimes more than bravery we need technology / advanced equipment help to tackle the on going situation…

Although there are enough planning on how to re-enforce the security, adding additional gadgets to the armory etc., are there in papers…but our politicians are either too busy in participating in a reality show or attending somebody’s birthday party or dividing people in terms of state, caste, language etc., If not any of these, they want to control some cricket board…if they show even 10% of commitment that they show on the other areas, then we will not be having a sad face today…

Does this means that we should not choose these politicians next time? It will make no difference, the new guy will also be the same, at the end of the day, we are left with frustration, anxiety and petrified…

We will forget all these incidents in due course of time, the cricket (Indian Premium League ) is going to start from 3^rd of December , at that time we will totally forget what happened to us…we will be too busy talking about our cricketers and their scores and their records…

After being highest tax-payer city what have we gained? Nothing more than the following tagline “Higher the profit , Higher the risk”. And we all have one statement to say “The spirit of Mumbai” ….(I will discuss more about this in my next article)