‘You put it rather bluntly, Rohit. But that’s the truth,’ Somaiya said, his face turning pale as he looked at Rohit unblinkingly. For a few moments, there was hushed silence in the hall.

‘No offence meant, sir…’

‘None taken. It’s a fact, isn’t it?’

‘From January 1993 onwards, thousands of kilograms of deadly, military-grade RDX, AK-56 automatics, Pakistani army-issue Austrian hand grenades and other small arms were being offloaded by ISI speedboats in the high seas off the coast of Maharashtra at Sindhudurg and Ratnagiri. For this, Dawood and Tiger used the sea routes and landing spots favoured by their silver and gold smuggling operations. The landing agents were paid well and also radicalized with talks about acting to avenge the wrongs suffered by the Muslim community during the 1992 riots.

‘At least nineteen men from Bombay, picked by the Indian conspirators, were sent for training to ISI-run terror training camps in Pakistan, via Dubai. They returned the same way. And all this while, we who were in the security, intelligence and enforcement agencies, who are tasked with protecting the country and knowing what’s happening on the ground, had no clue.’

‘Where were Tiger and Dawood operating from to prepare for the blasts?’ Rohit asked.

‘Tiger and his Pakistan-trained men were at work in the parking lot of where he stayed, Al Husseini residential building in Mahim. Tiger, once he had tasted success in smuggling activities, had bought two duplex flats in the building. Since January, these flats had become the headquarters for planning the bombings. Through the evening and night of 11 and 12 March, around a dozen bomb-makers and bomb planters were in the parking lot.

‘They were rigging jeeps, scooters and cars with RDX and giving finishing touches to the IEDs’ detonators and triggers. They joked, spoke loudly, swore, ate and smoked even as they kept preparing the bombs, a young girl, an eyewitness, would later tell the police. At the crack of dawn the bombs were ready to take an unsuspecting city and its people by surprise.

‘One by one, the planters left the Al Husseini building’s parking lot on the fateful morning of 12 March to bring death and mayhem to the city.’

‘Beyond darkness, there is light,’ Atharva said. Atharva, when he was in the mood, wrote short stories and notes on whatever moved him in his diary. ‘Tomorrow is a new day… the day of redemption for you and me.’

‘We have a poet amid us. A warrior poet, are you?’ Somaiya smiled at Atharva.

‘No, sir. Where is the time for poetry?’

‘Around the same time as the 1993 bombings in Bombay, the ISI was attempting to harvest the disaffection among the Muslim youth over the 1992 riots and the mosque demolition in Ayodhya. It was drawing in educated men like Dr Kamil Ansari of Bombay,’ Somaiya continued.

‘Kamil and other conspirators, looking for retribution, orchestrated over fifty IED blasts on long-distance trains across India to register their protest.’

‘How many died?’