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| If another 26/11 happens | | Mumbai suggests we're still not ready |
| Business Standard / New Delhi Nov 23, 2009, 00:02 IST |
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The Heckler and Koch sub-machine guns have finally arrived, as have the Colt grenade launchers; 200 bullet-proof vests will eventually land up, as will 19 amphibious vehicles from Canada to help patrol the seas to prevent another sea-borne attack; at some point in the future, you will have CCTVs in each street corner… The questions, however, are whether this is enough to ensure there is no other attack on Mumbai; and, are other cities in the country, say Delhi, better prepared? NDTV 24x7’s Managing Editor Sreenivasan Jain, who spent months meeting the men in uniform, put some of this down to paper for Open magazine, and the account is as frightening as it is riveting. At one level, the story of The Untouchables, as he chooses to title his piece, is the familiar one of shortages of people and equipment. Mumbai has just 40,000 policemen to police a city of 20 million, and Jain recalls the iconic image of constable Jillu Yadav finding his .303 musket jam while shooting at Kasab and Ismail and then throwing a plastic chair in their direction. The elite Striking Mobiles, many of which were despatched on the night of the attack, comprise policemen with ancient SLRs, probably never fired since there aren’t enough bullets to go around. In our policing system, each bullet has to be accounted for, even after encounters where the fugitive escapes — Jain is told of policemen on hands and knees looking for spent shells. There are the usual sordid tales of a demotivated and poorly-paid police force — Sub-Inspector Prakash Shishupal, who headed the Azad Maidan police station which Kasab and Ismael passed by on their way to Cama Hospital after the massacre at CST, heard the news of their coming, locked up the back gate of the police station, shut off his mobile and disappeared. This explains why a bleeding Sadanand Date couldn’t get any help at Cama Hospital despite repeated messages, even though the records show 130 policemen were sent to Cama between 10.30 pm and midnight.
How tough fixing this is indicated by newspaper reports a few days ago that the 30-odd SRPF jawans at the Gateway of India still don’t have a place to stay and continue to sleep on the road. But more than this is the politics that is frightening. The Mumbai police force is so politicised that when BJP leader Gopinath Munde spoke in the Assembly after 26/11, he said he had been briefed by “both factions of the police force”. When he was under fire for not having mobilised enough policemen, Commissioner Hassan Gafoor’s supporters said he only spoke to his clique of officers since others never took his calls! There are then the stories of the problems that Director General of Police AN Roy faced as a non-Maharashtrian; Hemant Karkare, who headed the Anti-Terrorism Squad and died that night, was already under fire for arresting Hindus for the Malegaon blasts; there are more than a fair share of stories about caste-bias in postings; DCP-level postings, it appears, are no longer the prerogative of the police chief, they are decided by politicians; there are then the stories of disgraced officers who have been appointed to top jobs for their political connections. The amphibious craft, the new grenade launchers, the sub-machine guns and, hopefully, the now-impenetrable bullet-proof jackets are unlikely to be able to protect against any of this.
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