‘Apart from Punjab, the Pakistani Deep State had its eyes on Jammu and Kashmir, which had chosen to accede to India after Independence. Refusing to accept this accession, Pakistan decided to gain control over the state by force and orchestrated an invasion of Jammu and Kashmir shortly after Independence, deploying tribesmen from the North-West Frontier Province for the attack. However, Pakistan’s aggression was unsuccessful as the Indian Army gave them a fitting reply and drove them back to Pakistan. Unable to defeat India in multiple conventional wars, Pakistan adopted another strategy over the decades. They decided to inflict on India a “thousand cuts” through a sub-conventional proxy war, with the help of terrorists.

‘The Pakistani army and the ISI created the Lashkar-e-Taiba, a band of terrorists under the leadership of Hafiz Saeed, an Afghan jihad veteran, in 1987. Saeed had done his post-graduation in Arabic and Islamic Studies from Punjab University in 1974 and become a lecturer at Lahore’s University of Engineering and Technology. He later graduated from Riyadh’s King Saud University. The army gave the LeT’s parent, the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), a religious organization of clerics, land free of cost at Muridke near Lahore. The base at Muridke would later serve as the training ground and command headquarters for waging a war of terror in India, especially in Jammu and Kashmir. They shed blood in India in the name of the imperative to make Kashmir a part of Pakistan and thereby reverse history. After Kashmir, the rest of India became their target, with attempts to recruit disaffected youth and organize them into covert cells.

‘But now let me get back to the tragedy that was the destruction of the centuries-old Babri Masjid, an episode that is a black chapter in India’s modern history. Pakistan smelt blood and went for the kill. They used Bombay’s absconding gangster Dawood Ibrahim’s muscle power, money, and gold and silver smuggling cartels working out of Bombay and Dubai – led by men like Tiger Memon – to orchestrate a frightful series of bombings in Bombay in March 1993 in the name of “avenging” the destruction of the Babri Masjid and the loss of lives in the Bombay riots that were triggered days later.

‘The actual aim was to cripple India’s financial hub, Bombay, and the targets for bombing had been selected keeping that in mind. They attacked Dadar in central Bombay, the diamond trade hub of Zaveri Bazaar, the Bombay Stock Exchange and the Air India building. Property worth Rs 57 crore was destroyed and 257 lives were lost. The synchronized bombings, thirteen of which went off one after the other, sought to kill Bombay’s and India’s spirit.

‘While Bombay took the blackest day in its history in its stride and moved on, the terror attack put the spotlight on the gaping holes in India’s security and intelligence networks.’

‘We were … caught napping? Day dreaming?’ Rohit asked. He had a nervous smile on his face.