The AK-47s boomed. The fidayeen’s bodies were punctured with holes and were oozing blood. Akbar’s burst of fire had hit the DCP, who took five bullets in his right shoulder.

Ambulances and forensic experts began arriving at the site of the encounter. The fidayeen’s bodies were frisked and then taken to a local government hospital, where they were declared brought dead on arrival by a senior doctor. The bodies were taken to the morgue to await autopsy. The car was searched thoroughly for incriminating objects and later seized. The DCP survived and was discharged from hospital a week later.

52. KARACHI IN MOURNING

52

KARACHI IN MOURNING

‘Good evening. This is Mark Dwight from the BBC. Four years after religious riots erupted in India’s western state of Gujarat, the central government has for the first time published detailed data on the number of people killed. The junior home minister, S. Shankar, told Parliament that in all over a thousand lost their lives, 223 persons were reported missing and around 2,500 were injured. The riots were sparked by a fire on a train in Godhra in Gujarat that burnt to death fifty-nine passengers. The probe by Gujarat’s state government said that a mob attacked the Godhra train, causing the fire and the subsequent riots.

‘The state government under Chief Minister Ramkrushna Solanki paid out Rs 2.04 billion towards rehabilitation and relief measures, the minister told Parliament.

‘In other news from South Asia, Bangladesh’s prime minister … ’

The screen of the TV set, which was hung on a grey wall, flickered in the dim light. Barring the voice of the BBC news anchor, there was pin-drop silence in the room. LeT’s operations chief Abu-Lakhvi, his second-in-command for Indian operations Abu-Muzammil, Abu-Muzammil’s top aide Al-Wali, and Babar were present in the room, sitting opposite the TV screen, their unblinking eyes on Dwight.

Abu-Lakhvi sat erect on a large sofa made of sheesham wood with brown faux leather upholstery. Abu-Muzammil sat on a carpet on Abu-Lakhvi’s right, his back against a wall. Al-Wali sat on the carpet too, with Babar seated next to him.

A month after the LeT’s audacious, synchronized double attacks on India on 11 February at Dehradun’s IMA and Pune’s BVP headquarters had proved to be spectacular failures, the terror outfit’s top leadership was yet to emerge out of the resultant sense of mourning.

Both the attacks, concluded this group in its deliberations over the past two days, were cases of ‘near misses’. Whose fault was it then that the two attacks had not achieved their respective objectives: eliminating a large number of Indian Army officers and BVP office-bearers, including its chief, Shirke?