The Siege: 68 Hours Inside the Taj Hotel (47 page)

All the Taj guests who dared go back with us into their memories require a vote of thanks. Thank you, K. R. Ramamoorthy and family, for the company, stories and reflections. Thank you, Remesh Cheruvoth, for recalling his former boss Andreas Liveras so vividly. Nick and Woody Edmiston brought the days and night aboard the Alysia to life for us, as did Ratan Kapoor in Delhi, and Will Christie and Tomaso Polli in London. Thanks to Will and Nigel Pike for putting up with our constant questions and intrusive demands. Thank you especially to Nikhil Segel and to Savitri Choudhury (and family) for introducing us to Sabina Sehgal Saikia and her world. Thank you also, Ambreen Khan, for sharing your innermost thoughts, and Sunil Sethi for setting us on the right path.

Amit and Varsha Thadani. This was your wedding. Thanks for reliving it for us, which we know was arduous, given how busy your lives are. Sir Gulam Noon was endlessly patient with us, as we probed and picked apart his account of being trapped in the Taj.
Presently working in Singapore, Dr Mangeshikar talked us through the Chambers and more, as did Bhisham Mansukhani, a great writer and observer of life, who has a remarkable recall of the hours trapped in Chambers and the final evacuation. Thanks to Rory Steyn and Bob Nicholls for the networking and the tales of Souk. One day we hope all to be in Mumbai at the same time. Ravi Dharnidharka, with a pilot’s eye for remote detail, got us from Souk down to the Gateway.

Thanks to the resourceful Mike Pollack. And special thanks to Line Kristin Woldbeck for getting us from Leopold’s to the Bombay Hospital. It took some courage to go back, and put us in touch with her circle of survivors.

In Pakistan, many who helped us have asked for anonymity. Those that can be named for their long-term support and advice include Syed Kaleem Imam, the former Inspector General of Police in Islamabad, Samina Pervez, the Director General of External Publicity at the Ministry of Information, and Wajid Shamsal Hasan, the Pakistan High Commissioner in London. We look forward to sharing a cigar in North London. Syed Zulfikar Gardezi, Deputy High Commissioner in London, dealt with our demands helpfully, as did Muneer Ahmad, press attaché, and our good friend, Shabbir Anwer, the Minister Press, who will hopefully be enjoying a well-deserved retirement by the time this book is published. Naghma Butt, the High Commissioner’s social secretary, has got us into many meetings, and was always a pleasure to call.

We must thank Sabookh Syed from Geo News and Tamur Khan Yusufzai, who worked with us in Swat and elsewhere. Smart and insightful, he is emerging as a formidable guide to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Thanks also to his father, Rahimullah Yusufzai, one of the country’s most modest but knowledgeable and well-connected journalists. Over many years Rahimullah has given us advice, lent expertise, made calls on our behalf, and tested hypotheses, challenging laziness and crass assumptions. We await his definitive book on Pakistan.

Our hearts sank when Tariq Parvez retired as chief of Pakistan’s
National Counter-Terrorism Authority. With a long view from the Punjab force, where he was head of CID, to the Federal Investigation Agency in Islamabad, which as Director General he revamped, Parvez went some way in creating Pakistan’s first real counter-terrorism force. He continues to work hard connecting people and ideas. So does the formidable Additional Inspector General of Police Syed Asif Akhtar, who travelled from Pakistan to Interpol and now, in retirement, to Karachi. Special thanks to Khalid Qureshi, head of the Special Investigations Group (SIG) at the FIA, and to his Waziri deputy, Sohail Tajik, who is now a Senior Superintendent in the Punjabi heartland city of Bahawalpur.

Thank you, Dr Feriha Peracha, for introducing us to your work on deradicalizing young men and boys in Swat and elsewhere. Thanks to her assistant Sadia Khan. Condolences to the family of the diligent and enthusiastic Dr Mohammed Farooq Kahn, a pragmatic and optimistic man who believed his work in educating young extremists about the true messages of Islam could make a difference. A devout and hard-working academic, he spoke with us at length in Swat in July 2010, but by October he was dead, killed by Pakistan Taliban gunmen.

Sarah Tareen, executive producer and CEO of Concordia Productions in Lahore, thanks for your help, as always, and congratulations on getting your first feature,
Tamanna
, to the big screen, with award-winning music by Rahat Fateh Ali Khan. Thanks to Major Muhammed Ali Diyal at the Pakistani Army’s Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), who dealt with our burgeoning requests politely and efficiently, getting us up and down the country.

In Mumbai, thank you to Pranati Mehra, a skilful journalist, who made the running on some of Mumbai’s biggest stories, in its darkest days of serial bombings and communal riots, and who helped us marshal research and contributors. Thanks also to Shree Thaker Bhojanalay, in Dadisheth Agyari Lane, off Kalbadevi Road, for keeping us refuelled in between driving, meeting and talking. Thank you to the accident-prone fixer Nandan Kini, who tirelessly wrangled locations and people with humour, precision and calmness. In
London, thanks to the team at True Vision Television, who continually support and promote our projects.

A huge thanks goes to our agent, David Godwin, for his invaluable support and to his colleagues at David Godwin Associates: Anna Watkins and Kirsty Mclachlan. Thanks to our army of editors at Penguin for marshalling and honing down the manuscript across three continents and through its multiple forms: Joel Rickett in London, Chiki Sarkar in New Delhi and Emily Baker in New York. Thanks also to our copy-editor, Mark Handsley, for his painstaking rereading of the manuscript. Thanks finally to friends and family in London, who put us up and fed us during our constant comings and goings between Europe and South Asia: Katy and Kevin Whelan, Lesley Thomas, Ninder and Ajay Khandelwal, and Karen and Jeremy Levy.

Index

The page numbers in this index refer to the printed version of this book. To find the corresponding locations in the text of this digital version, please use the “search” function on your e-reader. Note that not all terms may be searchable.

Abbas Mansions 10, 11

Abbottabad 108

Abu Al-Qama
see
Al-Qama (Mazhar Iqbal)

Abu Ali
see
Ali (Javed)

Abu Hamza
see
Hamza (Syed Zabiuddin Ansari)

Abu Mujahid
see
Kasab, Ajmal

Abu Qahafa
see
Qahafa the Bull

Abu Shoaib
see
Shoaib, Lashkar fighter

Abu Soheb
see
Shoaib, Lashkar fighter

Abu Umer
see
Ahmed, Naseer (Abu Umer)

Abu Zarrar Shah 119-20, 121, 124, 293

Ahl-e-Hadith xiv, 40, 106, 109

Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat 300

Ahmed, Naseer (Abu Umer) 109, 110, 113, 115, 120, 121, 126, 153, 156, 157, 159-61, 162-3, 166, 167, 169, 174-6, 272, 276, 298

Ahmed, Shazia
see
Gilani, Shazia, née Ahmed

Akasha, Lashkar fighter 120, 121, 153, 266-7

Al-
for Arabic names beginning Al- see entries at main element of name; e.g. for Al-Qaeda see entry at Qaeda

Ali (Javed) 118, 152, 156, 157, 162, 166, 167-8, 168-9, 174, 272, 276, 298

Ali, Chaudhery, Sameer 290

Ali, Chaudhry Zalfiqar 289, 293

Ali, Major 42-3

Alphonso, Moreno 32

Altaf, Mohammed (Abdul ‘Chhota’ Rehman) 114, 120, 121, 153, 262-3

Alysia
59, 60, 61, 91-2, 244-6, 284

American embassy attacks by Al-Qaeda (1999) 38

Ansari, Syed
see
Hamza (Syed Zabiuddin Ansari)

Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) 100-101, 140, 141, 213-14, 292

Lashkar phone call interception 153-7, 158-63, 165-8, 174-6, 178, 180, 262-3, 266-7

Aqsa, Al-, Lashkar training camp 110

Arshad, Hafiz (Abdul Rehman ‘Bada’) 108-9, 110, 113, 120, 152-3, 158-9, 161-2, 169, 272, 276

Asrani, Meetu 62, 63, 183

ATS
see
Anti-Terrorism Squad

Atta, Al-
116

Azizabad 115-16, 124

Bachchan, Amitabh 61

Badhwar Park, Colaba 27, 32, 56, 85, 127

Bagle, Raju 161, 180, 181

Bait-ul-Mujahideen see
House of the Holy Warriors

Banja, Fareeda 256

Banja, Vijay 208-9, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216, 217, 255, 295

Barapind 109

Battal, Lashkar training camp 108

Baweja, Harinder: 26/11
Mumbai Attacked
(Baweja) 299

BBC News
24 211

BCCI (Board of Control for Cricket in India) 31

Berbers, Willem-Jan 295

Bhai, Chand (CB) 49, 290

Bharti, Deven xiii, 100-101, 140-41, 166, 194, 235-6, 270, 271

Bharti Airtel 141

Bhatt, Mahesh 46

Bhatt, Rahul 46-7

Bhutto, Benazir 52, 105

bin Laden, Osama 40, 55, 301

Black Cats
see
National Security Guard (NSG)

Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) 31

Bocuse, Paul 10

Bombay, Operation
see
Operation Bombay

Bombay Hospital 182-4, 229-30, 241, 247, 257, 274

British intelligence 291

Bruguière, Jean-Louis 301-2

Burkei, Claudia 180-81

Burkei, Ralph 180-81, 295

Burton, Richard 61

Callphonex 119

Cama Hospital, Mumbai 142-3

Centre of the Pure
see
Muridke, Lashkar training camp

Chabad House, Colaba 57

Lashkar attack 74, 84, 266-7, 277

Chambers, William 20, 48

Chatterjee, Partha 145

Chelabandi hills, Ice Box 44, 49, 108, 111

Cheruvoth, Remesh ix, 59, 60, 61, 76, 95, 184, 210-11, 224, 242-4, 252, 284

Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST), Mumbai 74, 84, 141, 277

Choudhury, Savitri 17-18, 77-8, 164-5, 199, 274, 275, 280-81

CIA 25, 28, 301

Colaba 3, 5, 24, 29, 140-41

Badhwar Park 27, 32, 56, 85, 127

Chabad House
see
Chabad House, Colaba

Leopold Café
see
Leopold Café, Colaba

police 64-5, 173-4, 176-7, 192

Taj hotel
see
Taj Mahal Palace Hotel

Trident–Oberoi hotel
see
Trident–Oberoi hotel

Cole
, USS 39

Crawford, Cindy 17

D-Company (Muslim syndicate) 82

Darshit, Reshma 75, 222

Darshit, Shiv 75, 222

Deora, Raghu 221, 225, 256, 257, 287

Dharnidharka, Ravi x, 31-2, 69-70, 97-9, 128, 199-204, 274, 283

Dhole, Deepak 173-4, 174, 176-7, 192

Doyle, Kelly ix, 19-20, 21-3, 28-9, 68-9, 128, 131, 132-3, 185-9, 246-7, 274, 281

Dubash, Pearl 30

Dukan, UK Lashkar lynchpin 290

Dutt, Jyoti 265, 266, 270, 284-6

Edmiston, Nick 59, 60, 61, 91-2, 95, 210, 244-6, 283-4

Edmiston, Woody 61, 245-6

Elahi, Noor 2, 103, 113

Fahadullah, Lashkar fighter 118, 120, 121, 153, 160, 262-3

Faisalabad 109

Faridkot 2, 102-4, 113

FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) 38, 41, 44, 223, 257, 298, 301

FIA (Federal Investigative Authority) 289, 291

Fighters of Lashkar-e-Taiba
301

firemen 237, 239, 244

Four Pillars mosque, Lahore 38

Fouz, Al-
116

Frei, Matt 211

Gadchiroli 26

Gafoor, Hasan xiii, 24, 27, 61, 83, 128-9, 135, 137, 148-9, 157, 194-6, 279

George V, King 20

Gere, Richard 17

Ghadge, Tanaji 149-53, 231

Gilani, Daood Saleem
see
Headley, David

Gilani, Faiza
see
Outalha, Faiza

Gilani, Portia, previously Portia Peter 34, 39, 40, 41, 45, 51

Gilani, Shazia, née Ahmed 34, 39, 49, 51, 53, 109-10, 125, 290

Gilani, Syed Saleem 34-5, 290

Gilani, Yousaf Raza 43, 111, 290

Global Positioning System (GPS) 1, 2, 55, 56, 124

Google Earth 53, 120, 121, 161, 278