Authors: AJAY
Noida Driveway
In Delhi, the
head of the banned fundamentalist organization SIMI (Students' Islamic Movement of India) received a call from Pakistan. He noted down the Hyundai car licence plate number and called his trusted men to carry out the task.
The thoroughly inebriated AIG of the CISF staggered out of the Presidential Suite humming the classic
'Na jao saiyan chudha ke baiyan…
', the haunting Meena Kumari song. He fumbled and fell as he walked across the lobby. Groping his way across the well-lit lobby, the AIG somehow managed to pass through the glass door of Lalit Intercontinental Hotel. He then flashed his car parking ticket at the valet captain.
When his car pulled up at the porch, he dug out his wallet, ripped out a fistful of thousand-rupee notes, and shoved the tip into the hands of a bewildered celebrity, who had just got off from his burnished limousine. While the valet gave the AIG a quizzical look, the superstar gave him a steely stare. He slapped the money on the valet captain's desk and walked away.
The AIG pushed hard to get his burly body inside his sleek car and sat confidently behind the wheel. Like every self-possessed carouser, he did not put his seat belt on. He engaged the gear and pressed the pedal hard. The muffler puffed out thick black smoke and the vehicle sped jumping several traffic signals.
There was no sign of life on Golf Road in Noida. The AIG slowed his car down and veered to his right when a truck headlight pierced his eyes. He steered left, but the truck headed straight towards him. Frantic, he pressed the horn repeatedly. The next minute, all was silent.
The steering wheel had broken into his front ribs while the truck zipped past in the opposite direction and stopped. Gasping for breath, the AIG wanted to shout out for help, but not a word passed from his lips. He groped for his cell phone on the passenger seat.
The phone connected and his wife answered. "I love you, honey."he whispered hoarsely.
"Where are you?"
"Listen very carefully. Tell the Director General of the CISF that Project Karachi was only a trailer."He strained to take a deep breath, but his lungs seemed to give away. "Tell him that the Jihadists of Pakistan have initiated Tupac-II."
"What is this '
To Pak to'
?"
"I don't have time. Also tell the DG that the Indian agent of the Pakistani Jihadists is Sun…"The AIG's voice drifted into nothingness. He struggled to inhale, but his lungs, filled with blood blocked out all air.
"Who is Sun… ?"
The eyes of the AIG riveted on the two men, peering closely at him through the glass of car windows. His lips moved. He gulped, exerted all his enervated energy, but only red plasma emerged. "Help me,"his eyes begged.
Two bullets pierced the AIG's brain and the sound boomed into the instrument. While one of the men busied himself snatching the AIG's gold chain, Rolex watch, diamond ring, and other expensive stuff kept in the glove box, the other picked up the cell phone. He heard a screaming female voice, "Why don't you speak? What's happened to you?"
The man whispered nonchalantly, "We killed the bastard. Come to Golf Road and cry over his body, baby."
Mumbai Police Headquarters
The Rapid Action
Force, the Marine Commandos, and the National Security Guards cordoned off all attacked premises in Mumbai. Operation Black Tornado kick-started in full swing.
The Police Commissioner of Mumbai called an important meeting of the senior officers of Mumbai Police, the Intelligence Bureau and the Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW) to coordinate and strategize the further course of action. A few high-ranking officers dashed from New Delhi to Mumbai in a special aircraft. The roads were cleared from the CST Airport to Marine Lines. Some fire engines and ambulances had to wait until the entourage zipped past
Mantralaya
towards the Police Headquarters. The red beacons on their vehicles flashed through in the gloomy night, while the sirens pierced the sombre silence.
The Additional Director of R&AW initiated the discussion, "A few minutes before these terrorists landed at Colaba, one of our technicians, who was monitoring satellite transmissions, picked up snatches of conversation between the assailants and their handlers in Pakistan."
The Police Commissioner of Mumbai had a bone to pick with the other officers. He sounded dejected. "The Pakistanis are always a step ahead of us. As per my information, they chose phone numbers from an online phone directory and made random phone calls all over India with an aim to overwhelm our listening devices. This has been going on for the last several months. Precise information of this attack got lost in the cacophony of plenty. We missed out on the crucial cues. I asked my research wing to check out the approximate numbers of calls made from Pakistan to Mumbai. You will be surprised to know that there were more than a thousand new calls every minute."
"What type of calls?"
"It seems the Pakistanis are using some autodialing software, which picks up telephone numbers from the database of online yellow pages, connects to the caller, speaks about some market products and then goes dead."
"Six months back, we had some information about an attack on a few Mumbai hotels and other sensitive locations."
"We know your Signal Intelligence agency intercepted a few calls originating from Pakistan, but nothing specific came out of it. They keep talking about one impending attack or another with the intention of hoodwinking us. Their Cellcrypt software with its unique code is also ahead of our snooping system."
Siddhartha Rana, the Joint Director of IB and the youngest participant in the high power group interjected, "Sir, let's not waste any more time and start intercepting calls originating from the terrorists to their handlers in Pakistan."
The Police Commissioner of Mumbai nodded and connected his line to the electronic intelligence room of the Mumbai Anti Terrorist Squad (ATS). He asked the technician to record the conversation between the six hatchet men and their handlers in Pakistan. The technician right away tapped all calls originating from or terminating at the towers of Cuffe Parade, Colaba and Nariman Point. A few minutes later, he pointed out to the Police Commissioner that most of the calls originating from Pakistan were made using Chinese cell phones, which did not have any IMEI numbers. Hence, the caller's identity could not be established. Though he could intercept calls of Thuraya Satellite and Blackberry phones, he was unable to record the voice data of the phones since the data exchange among the phones was highly secured. The Police Commissioner immediately spoke to the Home Minister in Delhi. The Minister promised to talk to the Attorney General of the USA and to seek the help of the FBI to start decrypting the phone conversations.
Siddhartha turned to the Police Commissioner, "Sir, that still may not be enough. We need to tap and audit trail all phone calls from the area under attack."
"We have only one mobile passive interception van, equipped with 32-channel listening devices. Therefore, we can send it to one spot only."
"Please have it moved to the Trident Hotel. I'll try to work out something at other locations."
The meeting continued for a few more minutes and was adjourned when the Police Commissioner left for Cama Hospital to oversee operations there. Disconcerting reports kept pouring in from Cama Hospital and CST Railway Terminus. Two terrorists had gunned down the Chief of the ATS, Hemant Karkare, one of its finest officers and two senior police officers Vijay Salaskar and Ashok Kamte.
Siddhartha left Police Headquarters for the Taj Mahal Hotel. He instructed his officer to get different cell phone companies to provide a gateway to the backbone network of the Intelligence Bureau.
Siddhartha was horror struck when he saw the menacing black fumes rising from the domes of the Taj Mahal Hotel. It sickened him to the core almost as if he was watching smoke rise up from the funeral pyre of the heart of India's culture. It was an attack that had charred something into much deeper than just the edifice. Suddenly, he was jolted out of his trance by the uninterrupted gunshots and intermittent grenade explosions inside the hotel. One valiant fire fighter had climbed the ladder set against the window of a room and was struggling to douse out the soaring inferno. NSG Commandos were frantically trying to go inside from the side entrance but had to retreat many times in order to dodge the indiscriminate firing of bullets by the terrorists. Some brave ones entered from the guest room windows, facing impending death.
The soothing dim light of moon and the tranquil waves of the Arabian Sea were in complete contrast with the mayhem created by a few jihadists.
Siddhartha Rana powered on his laptop and clicked on the Spycell Phone tapping software. Thousands of call records filled his screen. Most of the calls were domestic and a few were to USA, UK and various other countries. He clicked on the menu and filtered calls originating or terminating at: Pakistan, Jordan, Yemen, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, and a few other Islamic countries. Soon, he had all the phone numbers and the ids of the owners, who were active in the vicinity of the attack.
Amongst what seemed like debris in the form of numbers, one call caught his attention. When he checked the call data record, he was surprised to find that a caller from Pakistan was trying to call Juhi Shergill, an Indian, using a US cell number. He fed the number into his software. Relationship trees and clusters of phone calls of the suspected numbers sprang up on the screen.
The American number was not getting through because of congested networks. Siddhartha racked his brain as the US number appeared to be quite familiar. He checked the email,
"The cell phone number of Imran Shah Malik's son Aban Malik is +1…"
Through his software, Siddhartha Rana assigned a gateway through a dedicated spectrum and pinged a fake call to the phone of Juhi Shergill. As soon as he did that, a bug got embedded in the target phone electronically.
Siddhartha's laptop beeped and started to record the conversation between Juhi and Aban.
"I've been trying to reach you since I saw you coming out from Taj Mahal Hotel in a television live feed. Are you all right?"
"Yes, darling. It all started when I was dining with a member of the European delegation on the rooftop at Souk restaurant. In the din, we got down to the first floor, where a hotel staff directed us to the room from where we made our exit. It's pretty horrible over here."
"I can understand. Did you talk to your father?"
"Yeah, he told me to come back to DC. He has already spoken with the MD of Air India. I'll be boarding tomorrow."
"I'll be boarding PIA too."
"When do you reach JFK?"
"Around afternoon."
"Good. I will be there two hours before that. I'll wait for you in the Air India Maharaja Lounge."
"But that's on the departure concourse of Terminal-4."
"Well, that's where my father has arranged for me to be."
"How could I forget that my mademoiselle, the daughter of an Ambassador, is a virtual princess!"Aban teased.
"See you, sugar."Juhi hung up.
"Aban, the son of Imran Shah Malik, the retired Chief of ISI…"Siddhartha's mind was abuzz with rapid thoughts that flooded him as the facts began to come together. "Juhi, the daughter of the Indian Ambassador to USA! "
"Everything seems to be rather knotty!"
Photo Studio
One day after
the Mumbai attacks, a man named Shalim Amār Khan approached Advanced Photo Studio and Digital Color Lab, near Subzi Mandi. He asked the owner to quote his price for video recording and capturing still pictures of the entire area: the topography of mountains, the catchment areas of the rivers, the contour map of the lake and snapshots of T1 to T4 shafts of the Great Dam.
The wary owner was skeptical, but when the visitor told him that he wanted to deliver the pictures to a film producer in Mumbai, the studio owner was excited. He quoted a price of fifty thousand rupees and asked for four days' time to get everything ready. The visitor specified that he would require high definition video and ultra-high resolution still-images burnt into DVDs. Shalim Amār also made it very clear that he would copyright the contents to protect the exclusive rights of the film producer and so the photographer should not keep any copies of the footage. The owner sensed that something was not right. He therefore, enhanced his charges to one lakh rupees.
After Shalim Amār Khan left the studio, the owner stuffed the money into a secret cavity to escape the probing eyes of the regular visitors of the revenue department and the police. He picked up his camera and camcorder and left his shop. The dam was not very far off.
Meanwhile, Shalim Amār Khan drove his car to the CCR Tower to meet the
Mela
Officer. He asked him for video footage of the
Ardh Kumbh
of 2004. The officer directed him to the Media Centre. The media officer proudly handed him all available video footage and made an earnest request to include his name in the credit roll of the documentary film.
Shalim then drove along the Upper Ganges Canal Expressway. The next destination was the holy city of Mathura. Shalim stopped at a street in Aligarh, where a Sufi singer and his flute maestro mesmerized a small audience. Shalim chose a corner and sat quietly on the ground, occasionally voicing his appreciation. In silence, feeling both happy as well as numb, Shalim slowly got up and opened the door of his car. The driver steered the car to the Grand Trunk Road, where a signpost read -- Kanpur.
During the long and winding drive, Shalim enjoyed delicious Punjabi food at the roadside
dhabas. Golas,
made of shredded ice, topped with multicoloured sweet syrups reminded him of home. He could smell the Balochistani scent in tandoori food on the roadside dhaba, which was no different from the aroma of the
Dilli
Biryani of Lahore. The freshwater fish that he bought from the markets of Karachi tasted no different from the mustard
rohu
that he had relished in Kolkata many years ago.
Many times, during that journey, he regretted that the two countries could not live peacefully. But everything changed, as painful memories that had lasted with Shalim for many years came back, "Why did the
Hindustānis
cut Pakistan into two pieces?"
Finally, Shalim reached the place from where he had started. He drove to the Digital Colour Lab one more time, collected the cassettes, memory disks and DVDs and returned to Jolly Grant Airport. The late night connecting flight from Delhi to Mumbai was running behind schedule. So, as soon as he boarded a Jet Airways flight, its deep leather couch was enough to cuddle him into a dreamless slumber.
Next morning, Shalim Amār Khan met the owner of Crest Telefilms Entertainment Ltd in Filmistan, Mumbai. He handed over the script and media contents to the owner and instructed him to leave one soundtrack blank. This, he said, would be mixed afterwards. He paid up an upfront amount of fifty thousand dollars after the owner promised to get everything ready within six months.
During a long solitary walk in the bylanes of Linking Road and S.V. Road, Shalim Amār Khan stopped at a few places. From Andheri to Bandra, he paused to appreciate the humble Jarimari Temple as well as the ostentatious Bohra Mosques. Within a distance of a few thousand yards, the imposing St. Peter's Church stood close to the unpretentious Sri Guru Singh Sabha Gurudwara.
"Which one is more true -- unity in diversity of culture or diversity in unity of religion?"Shalim wondered and checked into the luxurious Orchid Hotel, near the domestic Airport.
There was no direct flight from Mumbai to any city in Pakistan. Therefore, his natural choice was to reach Lahore via Dubai.
Tired, he hit the bed and slept like a log.