ALARMING DETAILS have emerged of bureaucratic delays by India's federal government, intelligence failures and avoidable logistic shortcomings in deploying the national security guard (NSG) to Mumbai.
Official sources said the 10 gunmen armed with assault rifles and grenades began their co-ordinated killing spree around 9.30pm on Wednesday, but Mumbai police initially passed it off as a "gang war" between city crime syndicates.
By the time the seriousness of the attack became clear and the federal interior minister Shivraj Patil, who has since resigned, ordered the NSG, headquartered at Manesar outside New Delhi, to deploy, it was around 11pm.
But the Russian IL 76 military transport aircraft that was to ferry the 200 NSG commandos was stationed at Chandigarh, 152 miles north of Delhi and by the time it arrived in the capital it was already nearing 2am.
Before the aircraft finally landed at Mumbai, three hours of precious time had been lost, conceding the tactical edge to the militants who had occupied highly advantageous defensive positions in their siege that eventually resulted in the see-saw battle with the NSG.
By the time the NSG commandos clambered on to buses at Mumbai's airport and arrived at the respective trouble spots it was 7am, almost 10 hours after the terror strikes started.
"This is in no way to fight terrorism. It is an amateurish, sluggish and feeble response," said security expert Ajay Sahni of the Institute of Conflict Resolution in New Delhi. A bureaucratic culture simply cannot combat terrorism, he added.
The Indian navy and coast guard also appear to have been lax. Official sources said they failed to detect the hijacked fishing trawler in which the terrorists travelled to Mumbai despite alerts from the research and analysis wing (RAW), the country's overseas intelligence gathering agency, that an attack via the Arabian Sea was imminent.
On November 19th the RAW had intercepted a telephone call from the southern Pakistani port city of Karachi to Mumbai that talked of "sending cargo" to the city.
The RAW then informed the navy and coast guard that Pakistan-based terrorists from the Lashkar-e-Taiba group aboard a trawler would approach India's west coast to launch their strike. And although November 26th was not directly mentioned, a date prior to it was specified.
The intercept of another conversation from Karachi to Mumbai on November 18th, saying "see you" at a later date was dismissed as routine and of little relevance by the navy that claimed to be swamped by such "useless" information.
The five-day naval manoeuvres to intercept the trawler, which also involved local port officials and coastal village councils continued until November 22nd, but were abandoned as they were unable to detect the hijacked vessel in which the gunmen sailed to Mumbai even though it was highly conspicuous as it strayed away from the fishing fleet.
Investigators said the terrorists had left Karachi around mid-November aboard the MV Al-Hussaini before dragooning the fishing vessel Kuber in mid sea, killing three of its four-man crew and making their way to within 8km of the Mumbai coastline with the help of the Kuber's master.
Before abandoning the vessel the gunmen beheaded the master, transferred to two fibreglass dinghies and made their way to Mumbai's Sassoon docks and the Cuffe Parade promenade adjoining the Taj, Trident Oberoi hotels and the Jewish Centre.
The Kuber along with two dinghies have been seized by the Indian authorities along with a satellite telephone, a GPS and a detailed map of south Mumbai, the area of the terrorists' lethal operations, all of which have provided vital clues to the operation.
The RAW advisory was also sent to Mumbai police who interpreted it as a customary warning similar to the countless numbers they had received over the years.
"Such self-serving advisories on terrorist attacks are periodically sent out by the security agencies to accomplish two objectives," a senior intelligence official admitted privately.
If the terrorist strike does not materialise, the local authorities take credit for having averted or defused it. And, if it does, the security agencies claim they had predicted it all along, thereby saving face.
"It's the perfect bureaucratic solution to the terrorist threat till something like the Mumbai case goes badly wrong," the official added.