There are a lot of news clips out there about last week’s Mumbai atrocities but this particular Sky News segment manages to hit a couple of angles particularly well –
- A new-to-me video clip where the train station mob unleashes some old skool justice on the lone surviving terrorist
- Photographer Sebastian D’souza provides the frame-by-frame narrative for how he captured his now famous pictures of the terrorists & repeats his assertion that terminal cops didn’t intervene
- The correspondant recreates the sea-borne attack route used by the terrorists to gain frontdoor access to the hotels
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Update: Another video – taken from CCTV inside the station – shows the terrorists at work. It also, however, clearly show a couple of cops engaging them and shooting back with a single rifle between them –
While this was one of the terrorists who was at the train station, this wasn’t the train station mob. Those are cops beating up the terrorist after their Skoda had been stopped at a roadblock in Girgaum. The WSJ has an excellent, and chilling, account of the attacks here, and it describes how the terrorist was captured.
In the alley, the state of Maharashtra’s antiterrorism chief, Hemant Karkare, sat in a police SUV packed with fellow officers, trying to coordinate a response to the mayhem engulfing the city. Creeping up, the two militants sprayed the vehicle with gunfire.
The officers appear to have died before any of them had a chance to fire back. The wall and metal blinds behind the van’s spot are riddled with bullets. Not a single bullet mark could be seen by a reporter in the area from which the terrorists fired.
Dumping three of the officers’ bodies on the ground and taking the others with them, the two militants jumped into the SUV and sped towards the Metro Big Cinemas multiplex. As they passed a crowd of journalists and onlookers, the SUV slowed down, a gun barrel emerged from the window, and bullets started to fly. Then, the vehicle sped on, with another police vehicle in hot pursuit. At one point, the gunmen ditched the SUV and hijacked a Skoda, police said, cruising through southern Mumbai — possibly looking for an escape route. Two hours later, they ran into a large police roadblock erected on a key road leading out of south Mumbai, at Chowpatty Beach. Skidding to a halt 30 feet away from the roadblock, the Skoda’s driver blinded the police with high beams and, flipping wipers, began spraying fluid on the windshield so that officers couldn’t see into the car, said sub-inspector Bhaskar Kadam, one of the officers manning the roadblock.
The three policemen armed with guns drew them. The nine others waved their bamboo sticks. Revving the engine, the car tried to U-turn but got stuck on the median. The man in the passenger seat rolled out and started shooting, killing one officer and wounding another. The surviving baton-wielding officers jumped on him, knocking him unconscious. Policemen with guns shot the driver dead.
This pair’s killing spree was over. Police later identified the gunman taken alive as Mr. Qasab, from the Punjab region of Pakistan, who they say is providing details of the plot.
First of all, I don’t know how much credence I give this guy. The anecdote I read has him telling us how brave he was to take the photographs even as the terrorists might have seen him, how he saved lives by running to passengers in other trains and asking them to stay inside, and how he would have done things differently if he had had a gun. Even if it is all true (which is definitely possible), I am still sympathetic to the cops who are armed with WW1 era single shot Lee Enfields, if not just lathis, and are hardly paid enough to walk into certain death. Their training is at best good enough to preserve law and order in a gang fight.
this is nauseating. i don’t want to watch someone get beaten down by a mob even if he has committed an atrocious act. that’s not justice and it’s not satisfying. it’s voyeuristic and disgusting.
(the rest of the clip sounds like it might be interesting)
2 · yeti said
As I said in my comment #1, this was not a mob. This was the cops having to subdue him after he shot at them, and they only had lathis.
In the wake of Mumbai attacks, an American friend asked “How can such a small country like Pakistan cause so much trouble for a big country like India?”
I replied we were divided among ourselves with different “tribes”, religions, mutual suspicion between Hindus & Muslims, and the China factor. But these reasons sounded hollow given that India has far more population than Pakistan (even its Muslims outnumber Pakistan’s population). To her, it looks as if India as a country is allowing these to happen on purpose instead of implementing security measures. She knows US has geographical advantage (two seas on either side) but is still wondering how a “strong” country can be bullied by a weaker country for so long.
Terrorism may have no country but if our leaders are pointing to Pakistan then why is this not being handled? I am puzzled now at why no concrete steps are being taken to protect the citizens. And even more puzzled at why some people are intent on blaming either Hindus or Muslims instead of catching the “bad” guys? Does it matter if the bad guys are Hindus or Muslims? I read about people being P-Sec or Fundamentalist, to me both seem to be birds of the same flock. Both value their ideology much more than simple common sense, truth, and human life.
But even America has its own internal divisions, so we again return to the question: Why is India unable to retaliate against threats from a small country like Pakistan? Why does it appear to be victimized by its much smaller neighbors? Why is it bought to a standstill by a small group repeatedly?
yeah, i read that just now. police beatings aren’t much better than mob beatings. I’m not saying it wasn’t bound to happen, but not something I dig watching in any case.
6 · yeti said
I agree that watching it is distasteful. However, the cops’ behavior is mostly expected given that these guys had massacred so many people, and also had shot at the cops themselves, with some of the cops only having lathis to defend themselves (aside: which, in retrospect, meant that this guy was at least captured alive).
I haven’t seen the clip yet but I think it’s the least he deserves…and I’m glad the rest of his life will be pure misery. Which unfortunately doesn’t undo events or bring back the dead to their families.
“Even if it is all true (which is definitely possible), I am still sympathetic to the cops who are armed with WW1 era single shot Lee Enfields, if not just lathis, and are hardly paid enough to walk into certain death. Their training is at best good enough to preserve law and order in a gang fight.”
on indian tv they said that some of the train station policemen ran away after their ancient guns jammed. saw a clip of at least one policeman trying to shoot back at the terrorists until his gun jammed and then he ran away. so perhaps not all the cops were apathetic. but they were certainly ill-equipped to deal with the attackers.
it’s much better than what our napumsak PM will ever do. maybe he wil lose ome sleep over ISI chief’s snub.
5 · Thamizhan said
One important difference between India and the US that’s missing from your analysis is the much more recently won independence from Britain. By no stretch am I claiming that colonialism is the sole cause of India’s “inability to deal,” but it is a factor and important distinction when comparing the first world to the third.
“How can such a small country like Pakistan cause so much trouble for a big country like India?”
I think it has more to do with democratic vs dictatorship than big vs small.
The notion that the terminal cops didn’t intervene is incorrect. They tried to intervene, but they encountered heavy fire from the terrorists with AK-47s. I read somewhere that the ratio of policemen to citizens in India is 265:100,000. These guys are understaffed, underfunded and untrained. As sad as last week’s incident was, I’m surprised that this doesn’t happen more frequently, given the obvious lack of security preparedness and intelligence cover in India.
If you see the videos of Hemant Karkare, just an hour before he was shot dead, he was wearing a bulky, soft, bullet-proof armor (which does not defend against AK-47s) that left a large part of his chest exposed, and a clanky old helmet which did not even go over his ears, even as he was walking towards a scene of one of the incidents. If that was the equipment and preparation of the ATS chief, one can only imagine what the rank and file gets. I read an article somewhere that said that the average policeman fires his gun only 10 times during training, and that people pay to get posted out of some of the special ATS units because there is more money to be made under the table as a regular cop. I don’t know the veracity of these stats, but they do paint a bleak picture of preparedness.
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What has independence have to do with the way we react to the bad guys?? I see Indian politicians react by either protecting or blaming the “bad guy’s” co-religionists or blaming Pakistan.
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expand pls.
is #2 kayastha_lady?
Real justice would have been to talk to him and understand the “real” reason these guys were commiting these atrocious act. I bet that his moter did not hug him enough or the majority just oppressed him and his kind.
I have to confess that this neandarthal watched the clip multiple times and was told by my colleagues that I had a big smile when the clip was running.
no, i am definitely not kayastha_lady and I am definitely not trying to use this opportunity to rant. Hence the short comments. relax.
17 · Nara said
Apparently, the only alternatives available are lynching and counseling. Who knew?
Yes, clearly what I was implying. Kudos.
I’m not a pacifist. I box and train in another full-contact martial art, and I come from a long line of batshit-crazy non-pacifist Marathis, and I have a healthy respect for martial cultures, combat, etcetera. I love Frantz Fanon and Bhagat Singh and all kinds of gun-toting types. I also drink beer and grunt whenever possible.
I’m the last guy who’s going to claim that we all need to hug each other and get along in all situations.
So, with my obnoxious macho credentials established (because I know that’s what gets the attention of some people), can a brother express his discomfort with the spectacle of violence? And that a beating doesn’t make me feel any better about the attacks or about the people that died, or about the circumstances that caused it, or the pain people are feeling? Why do we revel in this stuff? Why do we salivate at the prospect of revenge and surround ourselves with images of carnage and violence to make ourselves feel better? It doesn’t fix anything, just works us up into the kind of frenzy that leads to more killing, more innocent death, and more nihilism.
In a strictly ethical, virtuous world I would be inclined to agree with you. Mob violence and police brutality does suck and a police office who holds the mob back and says “This man is entitled to a trial” would get heaps of praise from me.
But, this being the Kali Yuga, I must admit that I do derive some satisfaction out of watching the terrorist get his deserts and I cannot guarantee that I would not have done the same were I in the officer’s position.
15 · Thamizhan said
“Independence,” per se, has nothing to do with it, but colonialism and the political institutions left by the British have a lot to do with the relationship between India and Pakistan. Again, I’m not saying that this particular history has everything to do with the current conflict, but you can’t compare the United States to India without factoring India’s relatively recent colonial influences into your comparison.
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blockquote>22 · Harbeer said
America had the good sense to replace its colonial institutions by drafting a new Constitution within a decade of independence. India is still going with the same atrocious piece of crap they authored 60+ years ago that basically just managed to modify the British Raj to put brown people in charge.
If we had any sense we would have actually gone back to first principles and built a nation rather than spent 60 years squabbling over which groups deserve to right to fleece the Indian masses now that the British are gone?
I have no problem with the mofo getting tortured. While I am against torturing suspects, I have no problem with whatever they do with people caught in the act. I am just glad he is alive because of all the terrorists, he seems more likely to squeal with his criminal background. I doubt if he really found “religion”. It seems more like a way to garner respect in his community.
It does show how pathetic Mumbai’s law enforcement is despite the many attacks in the past. I do not know who is in power now. But all those Shiv Sena/BJP types like to talk tough against muslims when they do not have to risk their lives. But they have no problem using force of the mob against innocent Muslims or anti-traditional Hindus in their petty movements. But did you see a single Shiv Sena contingent try to enforce vigilante justice and run to one of the spots where terrorists were in action? I bet they were scared and were content to talk tough behind the scenes. We all know Congress is another gutless party in both word and action. That PM is scared of a freaking Sonia Gandhi. Can one expect him to be a man against terrorists?
I hope this doesn’t mean India will start adopting ridiculously overdone security measures at airports and train stations when all that was needed was some common sense security measures to quell the violence. The freaking water/land border was unmanned despite many instances of the mob using it in the past for their illegal activities. Cops lack the courage and the weapons to control two measly gunmen in a train station. What if the mob decide to attack banks? What if a madman went superloco and started firing at crowds just because? Who will be there to stop him?
It is hilarious how the media makes it out to be some supersophisticated operation. What is sophisticated about basic scouting of a hotel? 3 of you join with me and give me a few months time, and I too can easily replicate this terror if I lose my conscience and sanity. Hell, I can do it here in the US itself. What will be different in the US is that law enforcement would limit the damage making it less exciting of an event for future terrorists.
Well, it was really nice of Bal and Raj Thackeray to be so generous as to let commandos from all over India, even Bihar and UP, into Mumbai to fight against terrorists.
This somehow looks relevant here.
5 · Thamizhan said
Some people are probably vindictive in singling out the religious component of this incident, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t matter if the “bad guys” are Hindus or Muslims. It does matter. It matters because it is a piece of the puzzle. Terrorism may not have a country, but there is a network of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism that runs through several countries and it has been very adaptive and flexible, taking in adherents from all different economic, educational and ethnic backgrounds. A lot of trails do seem to lead back to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf and of course Pakistan, and a common thread seems to be a shared belief in expansionist, religious demagoguery. It would be naive to think Pakistan alone is the problem, or even that it’s the ISI that is the problem. Take away the ISI today and you still have much of what enables the ISI today. The problem runs deep and it is both local and international, from madrasas to the imperial ambitions of their local and Gulf financiers. People are intent on blaming Muslims because they see a clear pattern has emerged over the years, but that blame may not help. The word “blame” doesn’t seem right. Accountability is what’s needed. The government does need to take concrete steps.
I’m a little confused with the information between all the media outlets. I’ve read two different names so far for the surviving terrorist and several accounts of how he was captured in a car with a gunshot wound. So who was this one in the station?
28 · Janeofalltrades said
Same guy. Two terrorists from VT -> Cama -> Commandeer police Qualis after shooting down top cops -> Commandeer Skoda after Qualis tires were shot out -> Stopped at Girgaum roadblock.
Also, this one was NOT in the station. Vinod should really change the title and text of the post.
Me too. I have got two different names and one report says one name was mistakenly reported. I’d wait for a few days to get a clearer picture. Sometimes, I think media just runs with whatever stories it has, not necessarily the truth.
25 · Rahul said
Heh, it does seem like a pattern with these loudmouthed bozos. When it is time to get tough with Islamic terrorists, they wilt. How embarrassing was that Kandahar hijacking incident? They let those two guys free without doing anything. What about injecting them with some slow acting poison when they were unaware? Or give them HIV via an injection before freeing them? Even the Gujarat riots were an example of Hindu fanatics going after defenseless Muslims. Why won’t the Shiv Sena types use mob violence to go after a portion of Dawood Ibrahim’s network? Because they are too freaking scared. They know that network will retaliate. They just like to talk and are just as gutless as the cops in the train station.
31 · Ponniyin Selvan said
The mass of stories during the attack was very confusing, and some were contradictory, but the comprehensive WSJ report that I linked to in #1 is pretty solid, and consistent with most reasonable reports of individual incidents.
Why didn’t you reply that it more or less doesn’t, though it does provide a very convenient excuse for many things like militarism and anti-Muslim violence and police abuses and not treating migrants well and not improving the lot of the 77% of people economically at the bottom (Hindu, dalit, Muslim, Christian, whoever, male, female, child, etc.)?
It also provides a diversion from the fact that it’s India’s alliance with the U.S. that is more a source of problems and its explicit and gradual embrace of neoliberal ideology since 1991 that accounts for it not being able to control @15-20% of the country’s land because of Maoism and other uprisings. And by “not control” I mean, “no-go” for the army.
And finally, why talk about casteism or gender violence or homosexuality being illegal when you can just complain about Pakistan? Seem overly convenient no?
yeti:
Please do, though I hope I don’t have to embrace the masculinism to do so– I would be happier wearing designer women’s fashion and high heels and openly feeling angry at purposeless and useless violence than pretending that I had to act like a butch straight guy regardless of my feelings on the issue.
Anyway, I agree with you that the celebration of violence is exactly the problem, and this needs to stop now. Not tomorrow. Now. Where is the discussion of what physical force is and how it is used and, much more frequently, abused? i.e. where are the grown ups?
24 · Pravin said
Aww, I think it’s cute how you think the cops and robbers are distinct entities.
1) There was terrorism before 1991, so it has nothing to do with neo-liberal ideology.
2) There was Maoism before 1991 too.
3) The bottom 77% doesn’t exist in the state of Kerala: there has been a comprehensive land-reform (of the Marxist/Zimbabwe kind), everyone is literate, 70% are graduates, there is gender equality, the infrastructure and health-care is good. But there are terrorists in Kerala.
There are terrorists in Saudi Arabia, where everyone is rich, and in China, which is not neo-liberal.
Would be useful if you could think a little before you write. Makes one wonder who gave you that doctorate, if you have one.
32 · Pravin said
No, because the two sides need each other.
is dr. amonymous kayastha_lady?
Analogous argument: There was currency devaluation before 1991 (see: 1966), so it has nothing to do with neo-liberal ideology.
See above.
I gave it to myself, thanks for asking. Would be useful if you avoided unnecessary personal attacks.
If it was upto me, I would peel a square half an inch of skin everyday, and rub chili powder. I don’t want to be like the terrorist…I want to be worse (in words of Chuckiee Norris). Of course I would never harm an innocent fly, but murderers I torture.
Some points to be noted: 1) When you capitalize first letters to denote “The Mob”, methinks you were referring to the Dawood Ibrahim underworld or to Don Corleone’s Mob :). 2) I think the reporter is not blaming the cops present at the station as such. He is perhaps blaming the state of the police/security system in India. An article in the Times of India about the NSG budget points this out. Money spent to secure Gandhi family: 180 crore Rs (Last yr 117 crore). Money budgeted for anti terror commando group (NSG): 158 crore (Last year 159 crore). So budget money spent to protect billions of people is down, whereas money spent on a few from the dynasty is upped by over 50%. It is not just the dynasty either, the article covers other details about all sorts of politicians, including those with criminal cases against them in court.
3) Another article mentions that most of the money allotted to Bombay police was spent on luxury sedans and less on equipping officers with weapons and safety equipment. Links to NDTV news 4) On top of all these frivoulous (sedan) purchases, there will always be corruption in most deals.
Bad analogy. Even if you can make the source-to-target mapping hold, you would be arguing against your first post.
It was not a personal attack. I was just wondering where it was possible to get doctorates without logical skills, so it was an attack on a degree-granting institution. It becomes personal only if you think you and that institution are inseparable.
I will leave you alone in your little logic-less niche from now on. My regards to everyone in that (charming and entertaining) ecology.
34 · Dr Amonymous said
Pakistan causes tremendous trouble for the world (selling stolen nuclear arms secrets to North Korea, Iran, Libya), so it is no surprise it causes trouble for India. It is wishful thinking to say it doesn’t. One could compare the situation to sharing a border with North Korea, but North Korea controls all its territory and may not be as volatile or unstable as Pakistan. (It doesn’t score as high on failed state indices.) It is true that India has its own internal problems to work out, but Pakistan is not just a convenient excuse for those problems.
Dr Amonymous:
OK, I’ll bite. Why specifically only 77%? If you’re going to help poor people, why not improve the lot of all 100% of people that are economically at the bottom?
he..he.. 🙂
45 · pingpong said
I think he’s saying that “100% of people at the bottom” = “77% of the total population.”
[Insert S&M joke here.]
47 · Harbeer said
It’s not a joke, and I will insert it wherever I please.
45 · pingpong said
Harbeer clarified it aptly in #47. As for why i picked the number 77, see here.
Yes, clearly anyone who argues that economic factors are important and that governments use nationalism and “Othering” to distract from them has no concept of logic. Moving on…
Siut bring up a very serious point and think your’re playing down the consequences of terrorism, dr. a.
its often noted that terrorism doesn’t result in many deaths on an absolute scale, though this formulation is short-sighted given the obvious economic targeting going on here. the terrorists, and perhaps Pakistan, are trying to hurt us economically–perhaps partially out of resentment over india’s economic gains–and while the upper classes get affected immediately by attacks on the taj and leopold cafe, pain trickles down as well, and a lot of people down the ladder will suffer from this potential economic blow, especially during these precarious times. in this sense, neo-liberalism has something to do with terrorism, in the same way our freedoms and lifestyle infuriates the terrorists. but these terrorists often come from a lands least affected by globalization, and often come from relatively privileged backgrounds themselves, for example the highly educated 911 hijackers or the dude in the versace shirt.
but back to absolute deaths. the big question of our age is how to prevent them from getting wmds, biological weapons in all likelihood though i suppose there’s an outside chance of a dirty nuke. very scary connundrum thats odly rarely discussed in the media.