The Siege: 68 Hours Inside the Taj Hotel (27 page)

‘My room is now full,’ Ram said to himself, as the new prisoners coughed and cried.

At 1.47 a.m. the phone rang again. Inspector Kadam jotted down the time. Qahafa the Bull introduced himself, and Abdul Rehman, the gunman in red, greeted him. The latter seemed back on top of things. He had good news: ‘The
mujahideen
have brought back two lambs. By the grace of Allah.’

Inspector Kadam texted his boss: ‘Five hostages’. When would the police move on them?

Qahafa had an idea: ‘Make one of [the hostages] call and speak to their home.’ Then he cheered. ‘The dome is on fire!’ At last there was footage of the flames.

Another phone rang in the hotel room. Abdul Rehman reported it to Qahafa: ‘One of these bastards has got a call. I’ll answer the phone?’ He found the handset. It was Annie Irani, the waiter’s wife, who had been trying Adil’s number repeatedly and was now speaking to her husband’s abductor. ‘Adil is with us,’ Abdul Rehman snapped. ‘No, he is not OK. He is as wrong as can be.’ Qahafa on the other line instructed Abdul Rehman: ‘Tell the wife, if you want
to save him, then tell the police to stop the operation.’ Abdul Rehman told her, adding: ‘Otherwise we will kill everyone.’

Someone new walked into the room. ‘Speak to Ali,’ Abdul Rehman told his handler, passing the phone over.

Inspector Kadam noted down the name. Ali was a name given up by Ajmal Kasab. He was the gunman dressed in yellow. Ali had been out searching for hostages with Umer.

Qahafa greeted him and Ali replied: ‘By the grace of Allah we have broken the doors with our legs to light the fire. And we found five
chickens.
We don’t roam around this freely at home.’ Even the gunmen were amazed by the lack of a counter-attack. ‘We are roaming on the third, fourth, fifth floor, waiting for them. Nobody is coming up. Tell those bastards to come up. Someone talk to us, this is no fun.’

Inspector Kadam texted his boss. What were the police waiting for?

Ali had one complaint. He had been struck in the leg by a ricocheting bullet when he gunned down the sniffer dog and its handler near the Palace lobby, and his wound was now bleeding badly. Qahafa passed the phone back to Wasi: ‘How is your leg, my brave?’ Wasi purred. He rewarded Ali with gentle words. Ali complained: ‘It’s bleeding and painful.’ Wasi had an idea: ‘You have to heat some ash and rub it in.’

Then Qahafa returned to business. Who was the naked old man? All the team had gleaned from him was that he was from Bangalore. Qahafar called out: ‘Ask the old man who he is.’

Umer could be heard shouting at Ram: ‘Name, home, religion and caste.’ Umer grabbed the phone: ‘He says he’s got high blood pressure.’ Umer screamed at Ram: ‘What do you do?’ Inside the room, face down, Ram was thinking fast. A Hindu banker was a prize asset, so what should he say? The only thing he could think of was that he also taught business students. Umer shouted out: ‘He says he teaches.’

Qahafa knew that a teacher could not afford to stay in the Taj and told Umer, who confronted Ram: ‘A teacher’s salary is twenty thousand rupees (£250), here you pay lakhs [hundreds of thousands]. Are you some kind of smuggler? I’ll deal with you.’ Umer was
seeing red again. Ram felt a gun smash down on to his shoulder, his head and his arm. ‘I am going to die,’ he told himself.

Qahafa could hear a voice screaming: ‘Stop, he’ll die.’ Then Umer’s voice: ‘Ready now? Where do you teach? Which university? How many traitors have you taught? Killing Muslims. Burning neighbourhoods. I’ll deal with you.’ Qahafa could hear the screaming again. This time he did not stop Umer, who snarled: ‘Father’s name?’

Umer came back on the line, calm once more: ‘K. R. Ramamoorthy.’

Qahafa paused. Inspector Kadam could hear something click-clacking. Qahafa said: ‘One minute, one minute. Dr K. Ramamoorthy? K. R.? Designer. Professor?’

Click-clack.

Qahafa was Googling the name and running it through an image search.

‘OK, listen, is he wearing glasses?’ He was. ‘He is balding at the front?’ Umer shouted at Ram: ‘Hold your head straight.’ Umer replied: ‘Yes, yes, he is bald. He’s got a face like a dog.’ Qahafa had found Ram’s online résumé. A top-class hostage. He was pleased.

Now he warned the team that they would have to consider moving, as the fire was roaring. ‘Go down soon,’ Qahafa said. ‘Take [the banker] down. Kill him yourself.’ What about the other four? ‘Let’s put them together and fire at them,’ Umer suggested. He turned to Adil and laughed. ‘A waiter! The only thing you are waiting for is your death.’

Inspector Kadam heard a strange sound like a lollipop being sucked. He realized it was Qahafa laughing.

Ram tried to retreat into his memories, conjuring the seventh-century Mylapore Temple of Kapaleeshwara in Chennai, where he had once prayed daily to the
devi
(goddess) of the Wish-Yielding Tree and he retraced the way to the central shrine, step by step. But disconcerting noises kept pulling him back to room 632: the fridge door opening, and someone munching a chocolate bar; the plink of a can being pulled and the glug as it was drained; and the heavy, slow breathing of four gunmen, lying side by side on the bed to rest.

6.

A Tunnel of Fire

Thursday, 27 November 2008, 1.50 a.m. – Malabar Hill

Savitri Choudhury was at home in Malabar Hill, watching the Taj on television, recalling the hours of disorientation after seeing footage of the Twin Towers fall in 2001. Now her city was ablaze, its most famous landmark was being gutted and her best friend was stranded inside. She had to get working. Broadcasters around the world expected her to be their guide, picking her way through the rumours that were pulling the city apart. But she could not think straight.

The lower floors of the hotel were still brightly lit with silhouetted guests staring out, while the top floor was dark, apart from small pockets of flames here and there. Columns of smoke poured from the roof. Savitri studied the pictures, trying to locate Sabina’s room. She counted up to the sixth floor on the sea-facing elevation, thinking of how she had lain on Sabina’s bed that afternoon. ‘Where is she?’ Savitri said to her husband, sitting beside her.

She recalled a lunch with three girlfriends in the early 1990s, at Zen, a Chinese restaurant in Delhi’s central Connaught Place, the Empire-era roundabout of restaurants, bookshops and ice cream parlours. Sabina had arrived in sombre black. All the diners had given absent partners the third degree as they tucked into Paneer Ten Pal Style. Sabina had come in for some ribbing about her on-off relationship with Shantanu Saikia, then a much rated (and fancied) rising star at the
Economic Times.
He had been married once before, which in puritanical Delhi made him dangerous; there was also a rumour about his ex-wife having committed suicide.

Over glazed honey apples, Sabina had revealed that Shantanu
was messing her about. ‘Dump
him
,’ had been the advice. ‘He’s having his cake and eating it.’ Later that night a friend had called to say Sabina was married. ‘What the fuck? We finished lunch at 4 p.m. and she was not married then.’ Savriti reached a fellow lunch-mate, who filled in the missing five hours.

Savitri had dropped Sabina off at the Khaadi store and Shantanu had been waiting. To woo her back, he had offered to marry her. Fortified by lunch, she hit back at him: ‘Sure. But let’s do it
right
now.’ They had zipped off in his car, but had been ejected from the law courts, which required more planning. They were eventually directed to a less principled priest willing to bless the union without any hoo-hah. And afterwards, as she prepared to ring her parents, rehearsing her ‘I have some news’ speech, Sabina had cast her eyes down, realizing that she was still dressed in black.

Savitri smiled at the memory, her eyes still transfixed by the TV. How was it that reporters churned around the hotel but no rescue party could be raised? Annoyed and anxious, she called her desk and made a deal with the editors. She would report for ABC Radio, but not the TV. Her face would give it all away.

At the police Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) headquarters in Nagpada, the Shogi telephone intercept system was working well, scooping up, in real time, the conversations between the
fidayeen
and their handlers. There were three mobiles in use. One was with the four gunmen in the Taj, the second with the two in the Trident–Oberoi, where dozens had been killed in and around a ground floor restaurant called Tiffin, and the last was with the two gunmen in Chabad House, where an American rabbi, his wife, their two-year-old son and several others were being held hostage. The ATS technical section dispatched regular highlights to the acting ATS chief, and to the intelligence agencies, state bureaucrats and the police command, including Rakesh Maria in the Control Room, near Crawford Market.

The terrorists’ identities and the location of their control room remained a mystery. Everyone was struggling to comprehend the
hard data too. The gunmen in Mumbai appeared to be dialling Austria, and receiving calls from a number in the US: +1 201 253 1824. A cursory assessment by the US intelligence community suggested that what the ATS had uncovered was not an American or European terror cell but something they had never encountered before: an Internet telephone network, with the gunmen in India dialling a remote hub that re-routed the calls to their handlers, and vice versa. The handlers’ control room could be anywhere in the world, even under the noses of the ATS units in Colaba. The Crime Branch’s hard-working number two, Deven Bharti, would have to remain in the back of a vehicle, his laptop on his knee, waiting for the next call.

The mobile inside the Taj soon rang again, Deven Bharti’s men chasing it down with direction finders and knocking on hotel rooms in Colaba, while Inspector Kadam, with the ATS, listened in.

‘Salaam Alaikum.’
ATS now knew the voice. It was Wasi, the handler, calling the four gunmen holed up in room 632 of the Taj Palace along with five hostages, and he wanted an update. Wasi could see from the TV pictures that flames were leaping from the roof and his men needed to move down.

‘Walaikum assalam
, we’ve found a room, on the [fifth].’ It was the gunman Ali talking, the one dressed in yellow. He had been out scouting for a room where they could shelter from the inferno.

Wasi asked if they had shifted the hostages already. Not yet, replied Ali. Umer was down there getting it ready.

Wasi urged them to get moving: ‘Set the rooms above ablaze and come down.’ As always, Ali was compliant: ‘God willing.’ They needed to keep up the momentum and safeguard the prisoners. Wasi told him: ‘My friend, do you know what work you have to do? Bring the hostages down with full security. The policemen must be coming up. The policemen shouldn’t come close.’ They had to keep alert, as surely the authorities would mount a raid soon.

The ATS texted a warning to the police Control Room. Patil and Rajvardhan had to be contacted. The Taj gunmen were heading
down and discussing how to take on the police: ‘Gunmen spoiling for a fight.’

Ali prepared to check the route down: ‘OK, now we’ll go. God willing, while coming from there, we will give a surprise. God willing.’ As Ali came down the stairs alone, Wasi reminded him of the drill: ‘Grenades. Remember. Get ready to throw them.’ But Ali was distracted by the opulence of their new surroundings on the fifth floor. ‘Just listen to me,’ he said to Wasi. ‘The entry door is fantastic. Big doors of glass.’

Wasi was wary. Glass would cause them problems. They could be seen through it and cut to pieces if it shattered. But Ali was not listening. He sounded astonished: ‘The room is strong. We can’t find another room like this. It’s big. It’s great. There are mirrors, and it’s very safe, it has two kitchens. There is a washroom. There is a larder. There are mirrors everywhere.’ They would stash their human cargo here and then go after the police.

The ATS texted police control. The intelligence agencies texted Rajvardhan. They had to clear out of the CCTV room now.

Wasi remained concerned. What about the basics: ‘Is there water there?’ Ali shouted to Umer, the terrorist all in black: ‘Is there water here?’ Yes, he replied. Wasi said: ‘Keep a bucket of water close to you. A towel and water, as the towel will save you. If they throw the gas grenades, then the water and towel will save you.’

Ali was in confident mood as he went back up to fetch the hostages: ‘OK. The night is ours, God willing.’ Handler Wasi had one more piece of advice. ‘You tie everyone up when you bring them down. Tight. Make sure no one is left in the open.’ For once, Ali was ahead of him: ‘I have tied them in such a way that they can’t even lift their heads, thanks be to Allah.’ Wasi reiterated the orders, like a schoolteacher. ‘You light the fire upstairs.’ Set the bombs. And bring the hostages down.

The ATS texted again: bombs. An assault could be minutes away. They felt worried for the men in the CCTV room.

Ali said: ‘Pray for us.’ He did have one niggling problem, the bullet injury to his leg. ‘Because of my leg, I can’t do what is in my
heart. Walking hurts too much.’ Wasi soothed him: ‘Don’t worry, Allah will help you.’ But Ali worried that he was becoming a burden: ‘This work was mine alone, but everyone is having to do it together. My leg is not helping me. Pray to Allah that we can make them dance.’

2.30 a.m. – room 632

Up in room 632, a face just inches away from Ram’s ear screamed: ‘Get to your feet, fat man.’ The hostage-banker was bound so tight he was in agony and his wrists and ankles were bleeding. ‘Come on, old man, get moving,’ shouted the red-shirted gunman, impatiently kicking him in the ribs like a stray dog, before he was distracted by one of his companions calling him out into the corridor.

It was a moment of respite for Ram, who ached all over. As he lay there, trying to zone out, a tune came to his lips. It was the Carnatic songbird Madurai Subbulakshmi, singing the Hanuman
chalisa
(devotional hymn) that he had heard so many times as a child: ‘You carry in your hand a lightning bolt along with a victory flag, and wear the sacred thread on your shoulder.’