Black Friday

by S. Hussain Zaidi

  ‘Want some dinner?’ Zarapkar asked.

  ‘Dinner?’ Chougule looked dazed. ‘I don’t think I will ever be hungry ever again.’

  He called the police control room to see if any more emergency calls had come in, but was told only his wife had called several times. He called home wearily. On the second ring, Madhuri picked up the phone.

  ‘Hello?’

  Her voice was enough to relieve all his tiredness. ‘Madhu ...’ Chougule was not allowed to finish.

  Madhuri hurled a barrage of queries. ‘Nandu? How are you? Where were you? Are you hurt? I did not have dinner. Where are you now? When are you coming home?’

  He smiled. He told her that he would not be going home that night and hung up. He crossed both legs on his desk and closed his eyes. Sleep was far away but he needed it so badly that he was going to fake it.

  ■

  In the midst of all the misery of that day, there were some who rejoiced. The conspirators were delighted at the stupendous success of their operation. Some called Tiger to congratulate him. They told him that his palatial mansion in Paradise was assured for he had followed the tradition of jehad. Tiger revelled in the flood of adulation. His spirits soared as he watched television reports. To celebrate, he decided to meet up with a childhood friend Shaikh Aziz Ahmed, formerly of Dongri, who now lived in Dubai. Aziz had grown up playing cricket and football with men who would later become underworld kingpins like Dawood Ibrahim and his brother Sabir. In their schooldays, he used to ridicule Tiger for his stout build and slow thinking, and bully him around. But Tiger had forgotten all that. He called Aziz and arranged to meet him at Hotel Delhi Durbar.

  Tiger came in his gleaming red Ferrari, clad in a white kurta-pyjama. As they settled down in a corner of the restaurant, Tiger asked, ‘Did you see the news of the blasts on BBC?’

  ‘Who do you think did it?’

  ‘I remember you said you were eager to take revenge for Muslim blood,’ Tiger taunted. ‘So what have you done?’

  ‘Well, I wanted to...,’ said Aziz weakly. He was hurt by the jibe.

  The waiter had been hovering around them. They ordered food and lit up.

  Then Tiger said, ‘I must tell you. It was I who planned it. I assembled the boys, financed the operation, and executed it entirely on my own.’

  ‘What?’ Aziz exclaimed so loudly that people turned to stare. His half-smoked cigarette had fallen from his fingers into his glass.

  Tiger smiled at his amazement. ‘Mama kahani sunate rahe aur baccho ne chand chu bhi liya (The uncle was still narrating the tale when the kids landed on the moon).’

  Aziz felt a deep sense of humiliation at this tale of triumph from the person who used to be his favourite whipping boy.

  As dinner was served, Aziz stared at the food, his mind working furiously. Suddenly, he found a weapon. He said, ‘But you should have made better preparations. You will not be able to get away with it, you know.’

  ‘What makes you think so?’

  ‘The police have found a maroon van in Worli. It was filled with weapons. They said it could be an important breakthrough.’ Busy with his calls, Tiger had failed to see this piece of news on the BBC.

  Tiger looked crestfallen, and his face reflected pain and anger. Aziz had never seen him look like this.

  ‘It should not have happened.’ Tiger rose suddenly from his seat and strode out of the resturaunt. Aziz was too flummoxed to react.

  ■

  The control room of the home ministry in New Delhi was alerted to the first attack at the BSE at 2.37 p.m., more than an hour and nine minutes later. For information that was so closely linked to the country’s security, this was an unpardonable delay. However, the union home minister, S.B. Chavan, and the minister of state for internal security, Rajesh Pilot, were both away attending a function of the Border Security Force (BSF). A runner was immediately dispatched to inform both the ministers, who rushed to their respective offices to take stock of the situation.

  Chavan called a meeting at 5 p.m. in his Parliament House office with the top brass of the IB, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and the Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL) to take stock of the situation. He asked a choice team of officers, including ballistics experts from the National Security Guards (NSG), to leave immediately for Bombay. Chavan himself planned to go there early the following morning. The control room of the home ministry was instructed to flash alerts to all the state capitals, alerting them to the possibility of terrorist attacks and sabotage.

  Pilot had instructed his secretary that morning to reschedule all his meetings in the evening for he wanted to go home early and spend the evening with his wife. It was their wedding anniversary. But that was not to be. He tried to set up a meeting with the prime minister, P.V. Narasimha Rao. Rao was in Sikar, Rajasthan, when he received the news. When he returned to his office in Delhi at 5.30 p.m., Pilot intercepted him at the entrance and briefed him. Pilot suggested that the urgency of the situation demanded that he should leave for Bombay at once.

  When Chavan heard of Pilot’s plans, he too decided to leave the same evening. Rao asked them both to go together. Meanwhile, Rao’s advisers reminded him of the criticism he had faced from the media and the public by delaying his visit to riot-torn Bombay after the worst riots in January. He too, they felt, should go to Bombay at the earliest opportunity.

  6

  The Days After

  13 March dawned on the bomb-scarred city.

  Many newspapers carried banner headlines. ‘Black Friday’ said the Free Press Journal, while the Indian Express headline was ‘Blasts Rock Bombay: 250 Perish As Thirteen Blasts Rock City’. ‘Bomb Blasts Rock Bombay’, the Hindustan Times screamed, and the Times of India reported that ‘205 Die, Over 1,000 Hurt in City Blasts’. In its editorial, the Times harped on ‘High-tech Terrorism’, while the Express pondered over ‘The Sinister Plot’. Television journalism was in its infancy so the print medium provided primary coverage and comment.

  There would be no clues until 14 March, except that the guest at Hotel Sea Rock had registered as Advani. So reporters lapped up everything that Chief Minister Pawar had said the previous night and what the prime minister, the other ministers and L.K. Advani would say during their visits to the city on that day. Rao mentioned that a ‘foreign hand’ was involved, which had newspapers speculating about which country he meant. However, in the absence of real information, rumours raged. None of the papers agreed on the number of blasts or the numbers of those killed and injured. The BBC stated that 800 people had been killed. The real numbers would emerge only during the coming days. Many papers gave rumours as facts: one for example stated that there had also been a blast on a local train at Nerul; another reported a blast at Madanpura, a Muslim locality. Doordarshan reported a blast at the B.Y.L. Nair Hospital. Pawar had to issue denials. A Gujarati paper stated that the inspiration for the bombing had come from the film Angaar, starring Jackie Shroff and Nana Patekar, where the protagonists orchestrate serial blasts that destroy several government and other buildings. One recurrent theme in most papers was that the blasts proved that the Mafia had more power than the police and government agencies.

  But the piece everyone read and remembered was by Busybee, widely regarded as the spokesman for the city, written in his characteristic style in his ‘Round and About’ column in The Afternoon Despatch & Courier on Monday, 15 March:

  ... No doubt, some organization will claim credit for the Bombay blasts ... The city has been so quickly and efficiently sealed that the terrorists have not had a chance to get out of it ... So the organization is waiting for its men to get to safety before making the announcement ... sooner or later an announcement will be made. Because that is the whole idea of the exercise: terrorist organizations require publicity for their acts ...

  However, no one came forward to take responsibility. This was unusual as after a terrorist attack, the organization responsible announces it proudly, usually by having a spokesman
call up a major newspaper. This was especially prevalent in Europe, America and the Middle East. This serves as a warning about their capability. At times, for the sake of publicity, some small-time organizations have also been known to claim hits that they could never have executed. There are very few instances of a terrorist group denying their involvement in an incident. But after the 12 March bombings, there was a strange silence. The LTTE, a prime suspect, actually denied their involvement. Paris-based Lawrence Tilagar, regarded as a close associate of K. Prabhakaran and one of the chief lieutenants of the LTTE, reportedly told a Sri Lankan journalist on 14 March that their organization had nothing to do with the attacks. The denial was reported by United News of India (UNI) and reproduced in a single column in the local dailies the following day.

  ■

  CP Samra reached his office at 9 a.m. sharp on 13 March. A pall of gloom hung over the 125-year-old police headquarter, which normally was abuzz with activity. The city of the seven islands had been ravaged without the famed Bombay police having any inkling about the diabolical plot.

  Samra got busy fielding phone calls, from the chief minister Sharad Pawar, Governor Alexander, the director general of Maharashtra police, S. Ramamurthi, and several ministers from Mantralaya. Samra was also informed that the prime minister was arriving in Bombay that day. S.B. Chavan and Rajesh Pilot had already landed the previous night. The leader of the opposition and BJP stalwart, L.K. Advani, was also expected.

  As commissioner of police, Samra knew that his day would go in dealing with the politicians, in the company of the chief minister, as protocol dictated that both Samra and Pawar brief the dignitaries. Apart from the fact that this would take him away from the work of investigation, what made matters worse was that given the status of his relationship with Pawar the day was bound to be stressful.

  While communal frenzy had been at its peak in Bombay in December 1992 and January 1993, not a single incident of sectarian violence had been reported from the neighbouring city of Thane, where Samra was the police commissioner. This had been duly noted in the press. When Bombay’s police chief Shrikant Bapat was asked to leave on 31 January, Samra had been brought in to replace him. The then chief minister, Sudhakarrao Naik, had told Samra: ‘Samra sahab, you have a one-point programme: maintain peace.’ Samra had promised that he would restore peace and normalcy to the city within three months.

  A.S. Samra (Courtesy Mid-day)

  By the end of February, the campaign to replace Naik had gathered momentum. Narasimha Rao decided to send the Congress heavyweight, Defence Minister Sharad Pawar, to Bombay as chief minister.

  Soon after he was sworn in, Pawar called a meeting of the city’s top police officers on 6 March. Among those present were Samra, JCP Singh, Addl. CP Chakraborty and Addl. CP Hasan Ghafoor. Pawar had ignored Samra and spoken to the rest of the officers. Samra, annoyed at being sidelined, had interrupted Pawar several times and even boasted that the situation had improved since January and would not be allowed to get out of hand. Subsequently their relationship had not been cordial. Samra knew that everyone in the city would be wondering if this would hamper the investigation.

  Samra himself was not too worried about this. He knew how capable his team was. JCP Singh, who headed the crime branch, was highly regarded, as were additional commissioners Chakraborty, Ghafoor and Pawar. Cream among the lower levels included DCP Arup Patnaik, who handled Zone VII, and Rakesh Maria, DCP (traffic), who had just returned from Japan after a three-month training in traffic management and held additional charge of Zone IV.

  The biggest hurdle that faced the police department was that thus far, they had no clue as to who had orchestrated the bombing. The sheer scale and meticulous planning suggested that it was the handiwork of a terrorist group, rather that the local underworld, who in the opinion of the police, lacked the expertise, infrastructure and resources for something of this magnitude. Samra could think of only a few organizations in the world that could execute such a ruthless plan. As similar bombings had occured in Beirut and Israel, he thought that Middle Eastern Islamic groups like the Hizbullah, the Fatah Revolutionary Council, the Muslim Brotherhood or Hamas could be likely suspects. However, the involvement of Kashmiri militants, the LTTE and the Punjab separatist groups could also not be entirely ruled out.

  The Hizbullah was an Islamic fundamentalist group based in Iran, with fanatic members and powerful patrons. They were known to have aided Lebanon in attacks against Israel. Most notorious among such attacks was the suicide bombing of the US army base in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1983, when a truck filled with explosives had been driven into the base, killing over two hundred marines. Two minutes later, another truck had run into the nearby French barracks and killed fifty-eight people. The attacks were designed to show Israel that even their supporter, the mighty US, was powerless against them, and were partly responsible for the US withdrawal from Lebanon.

  The sophistication of the bomb attack led Samra to suspect the involvement of the Hizbullah. Thousands of Iranian students lived in Bombay and Pune. It was not entirely unlikely that the terrorists may have found willing operatives amongst them.

  There was also the PLO to consider, more precisely the Abu Nidal faction, also known as the Fatah Revolutionary Council (FRC) or Sabri-al-Banna, which was perhaps the most dreaded terrorist outfit in the world. They had made headlines with the bombing of a PanAm flight from Rome to New York that had crashed over Lockerbie in Scotland in 1991. This group had collaborated with terrorist organizations of Egypt, Algeria and several Middle Eastern countries. They were rumoured to have been behind the assassination of the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in 1982 and the Algerian president Mohammed Boudiaf in 1992. The 1989 US Department of State-published Terrorist Group Profile claimed that this group had been active in India since 1982. They had allegedly been behind the assassination of a Kuwaiti diplomat in Delhi in June 1982 and that of the British Deputy High Commissioner in Bombay in November 1984, as well as the gun and grenade attack on the Alitalia crew at the international airport in Bombay in 1988. Like the Hizbullah and the perpetrators of the previous day’s incidents, Abu Nidal also used plastic explosives.

  Another terrorist organization which could have been involved was Hamas, which operated in the Israeli-occupied territories since the early 1990s, and carried out guerilla attacks on the Israeli army. However, the only problem with the theory that one of these groups had masterminded the blasts was that they would require extensive local networks which they were not known to have in Bombay.

  There was also the LTTE. They had perfected a technique called ‘black tigers’, where they wired explosives to trucks, bowsers or lorries, and rammed the vehicles into Sri Lankan army camps. The first successful attempt was on 5 July 1987 at Nelliady in Jaffna, when over a hundred soldiers were killed. On 2 March 1991, the Sri Lankan minister of state for defence, Ranjan Wijeratne, was killed in Colombo by a car bomb carrying an estimated hundred kilograms of high-intensity explosives. Sri Lankan navy chief Clarence Fernando was killed in 1992 when his car was hit by a black tiger motorcycle bearing explosives. Therein lay the similarity with the Bombay blasts.

  The LTTE had ample reason to be annoyed with India. In January 1993, a top lieutenant of the LTTE called Sathasivam Krishnakumar, alias Kittu, had reportedly entered Indian territorial waters off the Madras coast in a ship suspected of containing arms and explosives. The Indian navy had tried to establish contact with Kittu and warn him off. But instead of talking to them or surrendering, Kittu, along with his nine-member crew, committed suicide after setting up a time bomb which blew up the ship. The LTTE cadre had sworn to revenge Kittu’s death. The Indian government took the threat seriously, as it had every LTTE threat since the assassination of the former prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, at Sriperumbudur in 1991.

  But Samra’s gut feeling was that the bombings were related to the communal riots of December and January. This also made the involvement of Middle Eastern terrorist groups more likely. He thought tha
t the involvement of the ISI could not be ruled out either.

  It would be tragic if Islamic terrorists suddenly started getting interested in this part of the world, he thought. Perhaps it was inevitable. He thought of the history of his own religion. Prolonged subjugation of the Sikhs by the Mughal emperors had resulted in the sixth guru, Guru Hargobind Singh, revolting against the oppressive regime despite the fact that the first five gurus advocated nonviolence. The tenth guru, Guru Gobind Singh, too had rebelled against Aurangzeb. Had it been the same with the Muslims?

  He swung his chair around towards his bookshelf, which held over 200 volumes. He found two thick books on Islamic literature, an English translation of the Holy Quran, a translation of Nahjul Balagha, and a compilation of sermons and letters of Hazrat Ali, the brother of Prophet Mohammed.

  He was still immersed in his books when JCP Singh entered the office and saluted. He too had been pondering on the attacks, and suspected the involvement of the ISI. Soon Addl. CP (police administration) Chakraborty and Addl. CP (crime) Ghafoor joined them, and it turned into a high-level conference.

  ‘It’s interesting that the blasts hit three regions—south, central and northwest—while leaving the northeast untouched,’ Singh observed. The northeast region included the area from Kurla to Mankhurd and Mulund.

  ‘How should we go about the investigation?’ Samra asked.

  ‘Addl. CP Pawar is supervising the investigation into the incidents of the central region,’ Chakraborty reported. ‘DCP Patnaik is taking care of Zone VII in the northwest region.’

  Singh did not approve of this fragmented investigation. He said, ‘Even if local police stations like Worli, Dadar, Palton Road and LT Marg are handling the separate cases, the crime branch will remain in the picture. I will personally supervise the investigations.’

  ‘That seems fine,’ Samra nodded. ‘Today the prime minister and Advani are coming to the city. I will be busy with them. Singh, you take charge and ensure that there is some headway. What is the status now?’