It was all over in a few seconds. The battle-hardened snipers of the NSG, who had taken up positions around all the exit and ingress points of the campus, had hit the bull’s eye in their first attempt. The bodies of the four LeT fidayeen lay still and lifeless on the road outside the IMA, even as dozens of vehicles, including ambulances, pulled up, their sirens blaring.

Apart from the AK-47s, explosives and grenades, the search of the terrorists’ bodies yielded maps of the IMA complex and Dehradun, with the latter’s entry and exit points marked in red. One of the terrorists was carrying maps of India and of Delhi and Srinagar as well. Each of them was carrying Rs 10,000 apart from small pouches of dried fruit. Under their military caps, the four dead men had bald heads and hairless bodies.

‘They were fidayeen and had prepared, mentally and physically, to lay down their lives as per the LeT’s protocol,’ Shekhar later reported to his superior.

50. TIME FOR REVENGE

50

TIME FOR REVENGE

On the morning of 1 February 2006, ten days before the planned attack on IMA in Dehradun, LeT’s newly-appointed commander of Nepal operations, Babar, was watching video footage that Abu-Lakhvi had sent him a week ago via courier.

Taken from the rooftop of a flat in Ahmedabad, the amateur mobile video clip showed a mob of middle-aged and young men at work in Nizampura, a lower-middle-class residential hub. Below the flat from where the video was shot lay an alley that had chawl-like buildings on either side. The men were raising slogans – ‘Blood for blood’ and ‘Eye for an eye’. A few others could be seen in the grainy video displaying the weapons they carried, swords and spears, while seemingly challenging local residents to come out into the lane. Five or six of them were pummelling a man on a cycle who was passing by. Screams, wails and loud prayers coupled with pleas for mercy rang out.

The message from Abu-Lakhvi that the courier had passed on to Babar was, ‘Watch the 2002 Gujarat riots video to remember those who suffered. It is time for revenge.’

The ‘mob’, the video’s narrator claimed, was incensed as just a few hours before, a train carrying pilgrims from Uttar Pradesh had been intercepted and torched at Godhra in Gujarat. The crime was followed by several days of rioting across the state by mobs. A large number of lives were lost in the communal violence and preventive actions by the police, amidst allegations of police inaction and the collusion and complicity of state functionaries.

Babar seethed with anger after watching the video. He held on to the edge of a nearby table to steady himself. He agreed with Abu-Lakhvi. It was time for revenge.