How much more can Mumbai take?

The terror network has struck again and shaken people. Mumbai was typically resilient but is the State able to protect people from future shocks?

Terror returned to Mumbai full force, evoking memories of the serial blasts that had ripped at its very nerves and arteries in 1993. This time too, the targets had been well chosen and so had the time: bustling trains carrying middle-class Mumbaikars soon after offices had shut. But that was not all. There was a diabolical postscript. The intention of the terror-wreakers was aimed not just at paralysing the country’s financial capital or provoking a communal conflagration. It was also crafted at triggering a response outside the state of Maharashtra: first class compartments had been picked because Gujaratis can afford to travel in them.

The perpetrators of July 11, had done their homework. Ask any intelligence or security officer and they will all agree that the planning and execution of seven high-powered blasts in a matter of 11 minutes would take at least four to five months of preparation. They would have brought in the RDX from somewhere, stored it in Mumbai, undertaken dry runs and all of this cannot be done without local support and shelter.

Moments after the blasts, hundreds of commuters with bloodied faces and tattered clothes staggered out of railway stations wondering - why us? Why Mumbai again? How much more can Mumbai take?

The answers were not clear even as injured commuters were being lifted and carried out by fellow passengers, some on makeshift stretchers. Help was not available to most passengers. Angry commuters blamed the administration for not providing timely help.

The blasts took place near Matunga, Bandra, Khar, Mahim, Jogeshwari, Bhayandar and Borivali stations. All trains on both Western and Harbour lines were stopped immediately. Entire sections of the iron-hulled compartments had been ripped out, in some cases reducing the doorways and pathways to mangled steel. The blasts took place between 6 and 6.30pm, peak rush hour for the city when most citizens are headed north towards their homes.

Pandemonium spread through the city as reports began coming in. Phone services were jammed as anxious citizens tried to get through to near and dear ones though Commissioner A.N. Roy denied that there was any attempt to block or jam phone lines.

The survivors had a tale of terror to tell. A loud blast. Then smoke, blood, the acrid smell of burning flesh and screams. These commuters lived to tell about July 11.

“I’m probably the only person who survived in compartment No 4 (first-class). I was on the footboard when the coach blew up at Mahim. The force of the blast threw me on to the platform - that is how I survived. There was just blood everywhere,” said 50-year-old Prakash Shah.

Anand Sekhsaria, another passenger, had a lucky escape. He couldn’t get into the first-class compartment and had to find a second-class seat in the Borivali Fast Train which blew up at Mahim. “There were bodies lying around. This is a second life for me,” was all he could say. He wasn’t the only one who saw a divine hand in his escaping death. Another commuter, Kamlesh Shah, said, “I was going to Kandivali and was in the first-class coach. Suddenly there was a massive blast in Bandra. A ceiling fan hit my head. When I recovered, I saw just blood, bodies and severed limbs. I had lost my cellphone but there were several lying around. I tried dialling them to call my family but the phones were all dead.”

Perhaps used to the terror that now seems to be striking Mumbai with sickening regularity, perhaps used to the plain fact that they have to cope, the first rescuers at the Mahim railway station were survivors on the train and those waiting at the platforms. Locals too joined in rescuing the injured and taking out bodies. Emergency vehicles of the Mumbai Police, the Fire Brigade, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation and voluntary organisations also pitched in.

Now was not the time to ponder the question of how much more could Mumbai take. The post-mortem, the analysis, would have to wait. Mumbaikars needed help and residents chipped in with food and water and makeshift stretchers for the injured.

At various affected spots, the residents set up living arrangements for stranded commuters inside schools, colleges and marriage halls. At Santacruz, relief and rescue work was affected as the approach to the railway station is congested. However, police teams barricaded the entry and exit points to allow rescue vehicles to move in and out. Mumbai’s local trains are the very lifeline of the city. Some 5.5 million passengers travel in them every day, in a north-south direction. That day, the life-line was choking. Why?

The inability of the intelligence agencies to sniff out an operation of this scale is as scary as the Mumbai Police’s inability to have read the signals on the streets. Even though the authorities have started blaming militant outfits like the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) and the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) for the blasts, the foundation for this tragic incident was visible closer home.

Sparks to trigger communal tension had been around for the last couple of weeks. Riots broke out in Bhiwandi over the construction of a police outpost adjoining a mosque. And just when the tension was dying down, the desecration of the statue of the late Meenatai, wife of Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray, led to Shiv Sainiks going on a rampage. Legislators of the Shiv Sena and the bjp staged protests, charging that Samajwadi Party leader Abu Asim Azmi was involved in the Bhiwandi riots. Thackeray joined issue by saying the “fanatic” forces in Bhiwandi had a hand in the statue desecration.

The political invective had not even settled when the blasts rocked the megapolis.

Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh sees a pattern emerging. Speaking to the media, he said that the agencies will probe any link between the blasts and the Bhiwandi and Dadar riots. But what the chief minister did not dwell upon was the State’s failure to protect its ordinary citizens - the Mumbaikar who has time and again borne the brunt of communal hatred and its after-effects.

It can’t be denied that there has been a pattern in the blasts earlier. The 1993 serial blasts followed the Mumbai riots, which came in the wake of the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Though no party or government agency is ready to buy the argument that there were prior indications, intelligence agencies had enough inputs to warn the authorities. But the agencies chose to treat them as isolated incidents.

Other recent incidents like the abortive attack on the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh headquarters in Nagpur and the arrest of three suspected LeT members in Aurangabad pointed to bigger assaults.

On March 10 this year, the Railway police in Mumbai defused a bomb at the Byculla station. The bomb blasts in the city have been planned to target the most crowded railway stations with the intention of causing maximum casualties and panic among the people. But no security agency thought the terrorists would place explosives on the crowded local emus of the Western Railway.

While local trains are Mumbai’s lifeline, best buses form the other equally important mode of transport for Mumbaikars. These too were not spared. On July 28, 2003, four persons were killed and 32 injured when a powerful explosion ripped apart a bus in Ghatkopar in northern Mumbai. Why had the security apparatus failed to analyse these reports?

The chronology points to a deliberate attempt to tear apart the country’s communal harmony. And it could have been a true indicator of what could be coming our way. But the intelligence agencies have hardly been in a state of full alert to avert any major disaster.

Several LeT and SIMI modules were busted and a huge amount of explosive material, including RDX, was recovered during raids in Aurangabad, Nashik and Nagpur in the last two months. The probe also revealed that similar LeT modules were actively operating in several towns of Maharashtra, besides Hyderabad and Bangalore.

But all these inputs didn’t translate into action that could have saved the casualties of July 11. Blaming intelligence failure for the blasts, Deputy Chief Minister R.R. Patil, who also holds the Home portfolio, said, “These blasts had no link with the Bhiwandi riots. But an international terror network could be at work. However not only the state intelligence failed, but also the Intelligence Bureau, which comes under the Centre,” he said.

Patil, who had a long meeting with Mumbai Commissioner of Police Roy, said, “It’s not only the state that has an intelligence wing. The Centre too has it. We have still not come to any definite conclusion on who triggered the blasts, but we believe that an international terrorist organisation could have done it.” According to a senior police official speaking on terms of anonymity, attacking Delhi and Mumbai is like paralysing the mind and heart of a vibrant nation.

The magnitude of the synchronised blasts has conclusively pointed to the use of RDX by the attackers, official sources said. Mangled coach after mangled coach bore the imprint of the damage that powered explosives like RDX can cause but Mumbai’s heart and mind kept ticking.