Mumbai, December 2
Those who live by the gun also die by its shadow. But there are a few who attain martyrdom and leave behind a legend to emulate and remember.

Recently promoted as assistant sub-inspector, 48-year-old Tukaram Omble was one such brave heart.

His is one of the many heroic stories that has emerged as the dust settles on the deadly terror strikes in Mumbai.

Thanks to this daredevil, the police could arrest at least one terrorist alive, whom investigating agencies are now making sing.

Acting on a message received on his walkie-talkie on the night of November 26, Omble chased down two terrorists, armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles, as they headed toward Girgaum Chowpatty.

Meanwhile, the DB Nagar police station team was setting up a‘naka bandi’ at the Chowpatty signal after the message was circulated.

“We had barricaded the road at Girgaum Chowpatty soon after we received a message that two terrorists had hijacked a Skoda and were firing randomly in South Mumbai,” assistant inspector Hemant Bavdhankar of the DB Nagar police station said.

“Moments later, we saw a car bearing the description slowing down at a distance of around 50 feet away from us. As the vehicle was trying to take a U-turn, it hit the road-divider,” he said.

The car then started drawing closer to the police and Ajmal Kasab (the arrested terrorist) came out of the car and pretended to surrender, only to open fire seconds later.

Without caring for his life or the consequences, Ombale took Kasab head on. He sprang toward the ultra and gripped the barrel of his AK-47 rifle with both hands.

With the barrel pointing toward the cop, Iman pulled the trigger. The brave policeman took all the bullets on himself.

Bullet-holed Ombale collapsed, but did not let go of Iman. Thus, he not only provided a perfect cover to his team, but also prevented Iman from firing at any one else and in turn saving many precious lives.

The other team members had, by then, killed the other terrorist Ismail. They now pounced on Iman and captured him.

Thanks to the valour and supreme sacrifice of this fearless cop, investigators are now unravelling the scale of the terror operation from Iman, who was an operative of Lashkar-e-Taiba for the last one-and-a-half years. — PTI

We started our evening casually at The Taj Mahal Palace at the Crystal Ball Room. I got there at 9.35 p.m. on Wednesday with my brother Manish for our friend's wedding reception. We hadn't been there 15 minutes when we heard sounds, we dismissed as construction work or crackers. When the 'boom boom' went on and got nearer, it was apparent they were gunshots.

The staff started securing all the gates and we were all planning our next move when a window shattered and shots rang through the glass and wooden doors. Instinctively, we ducked, crouched and made our way to the service door, which led to an alcove. We were being ushered by the staff through corridors, kitchens and other areas till we reached the Chambers and Elite Club.

We were joined by more people and soon the place was filled with probably 250 persons. The doors were locked and the staircase and elevators were secured as told by the hotel staff.

By then we stopped hearing gunfire and felt safer inside. Phone calls coming in confirmed many places in the city had been similarly targeted. We also turned to laptops for more updates as the TV connections were cut off.

Soon the hotel staff brought in crates of water bottles and juices, and tins of potatoes, sandwiches and canapés.

We heard that the ATS (anti-terrorism squad) and the army had arrived. It was 3 a.m. when we gathered at the service door and were asked to be silent. It was a crush as everyone wanted to be the first to be out, but people didn't panic. Manish, myself and four friends were the 10th or 11th bunch of people to be evacuated.

About 10 to 15 of us were led into a narrow corridor, and that's when it got chaotic. In the corridor they were fired at. No one knew where the gunshots came from, but they (the gunmen) were close and one of the Taj staff was shot on the left side of his stomach and was crying in pain.

It was like a stampede as everyone was reversing and trying to get to the safest corner possible in the hall back where we had started from. We entered the small Lavender Room just beside the big hall where we were earlier. We helped the man shot get inside and laid him on the sofa and shut the room door. As the door did not have any system to bolt it from inside, we broke few chairs and bolted the door by sticking the wooden arms into the door handle.

After half an hour, we heard gunfire from the corridor outside. Everyone flattened themselves to the ground. The floor was a tangle of bodies and limbs with around 70 people inside the small room and many were in the bigger room adjacent to ours. We then put off the lights and stayed in darkness till morning without any air conditioner. We were breathing with a hope to see light soon and smell the fresh air.

Firing rounds were then exchanged every 30 to 45 minutes. All what we had with us was the prayers in our minds as we were sure that the terrorists were close to our corridor. We would have gone through over 300 rounds of gunshots in the same corridor throughout the night from 3 a.m. onwards. We thought that our lives were protected just by the wooden walls and that a grenade or gunshots passing through could decide our fate. Dawn broke but there was no word from outside and our room smelt of gun powder.

At 8.35 a.m., a commando rushed in and told us to open the door. We did so slowly and the door was being banged from outside. We were still very scared as we did not know who was knocking.

It was a commando and we were then instructed to go slowly through the corridors and walk down the staircases through the fire exit. While leaving the room, the commando asked Manish and me to help in carrying the injured man downstairs, which we did with tears flowing down.

As we left our room and walked through the corridor, we gasped for breath as the smell of gunpowder pervaded the air and we realised that the gunshots we heard all night was just five metres away from our room. There were bullets all over the floor and the fine woodwork and glass was shattered at every place.

We walked through the small fire exit stairs and we saw blood stains and some commando's guard kits thrown at the side - presumably they would have been injured during their rough ordeal.

We then came out of the hotel and saw daylight and thanked god for giving us a second birth. The injured man we carried was escorted to an ambulance.

It was 9.15 a.m. when we were waiting for a bus with tears of joy in our eyes. We never knew that the bullets that we left behind would again be heard from above; while boarding the bus, there was panic and we once again for a few seconds took cover wherever we got place.

But the commandos asked us not to panic and slowly board the bus. We then left for the Azad Maidan police station for verification purposes.

New Delhi, December 2
Praful Patel, an Indian origin man from Uganda who lives in Britain, was terrified when he heard a loud knock on the door of his Taj Hotel room in the middle of the night in Mumbai. He thought the terrorists were outside and would kill him if he opened the door, but thankfully, it was a commando who had come to save him.

Sharing his 16-hour ordeal in the Taj Hotel, Mumbai, last week when terrorists ravaged Mumbai over three days and three nights, killing 183 people and injuring 239, Patel said he was watching a cricket match when he heard “some shots”.

“I was told it was a gang war going on at the Leopold Café. Within a few minutes, I was asked to rush to my room and not to open the door unless I was sure who was knocking at it,” Patel said.

“With lights off, I spent the night listening to the frequent bursts of gunfire. I didn’t know what was happening outside as the TV and my mobile phone were not working,” he said.

“At 3 a.m., one of the commandos knocked at my door, shouting that he will blow it if I do not open it.” “I was terrified but I opened the door and saw someone looking like a terrorist. He ordered, ‘Hands up’ and said he was a commando (who had) come to help me. I could not restrain myself then and started to cry and went to the lobby with tears down my eyes,” Patel recalled.

“As I walked through the lobby and the kitchen, I was horrified at the carnage as I stepped over pools of dried blood. I am still in a state of after-shock,” he said. — IANS

Mumbai, December 2
Global terror group Al-Qaida, or its various franchisees, could be behind the audacious terror attacks here, an act which incidentally can also be a part of a larger conspiracy to gain favourable political outcomes for extremists, said a leading US think tank.

US private intelligence firm Stratfor, in its latest report, has said that “evidence and logic suggest that radical Pakistani Islamists carried out the attack.” While pointing out that it was difficult to pinpoint one particular group, the intelligence firm said, “It could have been linked to Al-Qaida prime or its various franchisees.”

Stratfor, pointing out to a larger conspiracy behind the attack, said too much planning and training was involved in this attack for it to have been conceived by a “bunch of guys in a garage”. It said in the highly politicised atmosphere of Pakistan’s radical Islamist factions, terror frequently had a more sophisticated and strategic purpose and hence “whoever invested the time and took the risk in organising this attack had a reason to do so.” Stratfor said unlike previous occasions when terror acts were traced back to Pakistan, this time around the Indian government was under too much pressure to act.

“As one might expect, public opinion in India is shifting from stunned to furious. India’s Congress party-led government is politically weak and nearing the end of its life span. It lacks the political power to ignore the attack, even if it were inclined to do so. If it ignored the attack, it would fall, and a more intensely nationalist government would take its place.” — PTI

Mumbai, December 2
Investigators probing the terror attacks in Mumbai last week are now faced with the possibility of more terrorists being involved in the attack. So far, the police claim to have killed nine terrorists in the commando action and arrested one of them.

However, a number of loose ends under investigation indicate that more terrorists could have landed in the city prior to the attack or managed to escape from Mumbai even while the operations by the National Security Guards commandos were continuing.

Leads given by Mohammad Ajmal Amir Iman or Amir Qasab, the lone terrorist arrested so far, and circumstantial evidence unearthed by investigators indicate the possibility of more terrorists landing on Indian shores.

Sources here say the arrested terrorist has confessed to being part of a team of 29 persons who had undergone training in Pakistan. While 10 of them landed at Cuffe Parade before the terror strike, material seized from a fishing boat used by the terrorists indicate that they had rendezvoused with their contacts at Porbander port in Gujarat and the union territory of Diu.

It is still not clear if some of the terrorists sent from Karachi disembarked at one of these ports.

According to sources here, investigators have recovered personal items like soaps and toiletries belonging to a large number of persons from the fishing boat called the Kuber which the terrorists are believed to have used to land in India. Equipment for at least 15 persons was found on board the Kuber, the sources here said.

Officials suspect that one group of terrorists may have boarded a separate dinghy from the Kuber and landed at some other point in the country to carry out attacks in the future. The arrested terrorist is being subjected to sustained interrogation to obtain further information.

Investigators are now certain that the Kuber which left Porbandar on November 13 may have picked up the terrorists from a Pakistani 'mother ship' a few days later and brought them to Mumbai's coast. The terrorists are believed to have launched the inflatable Gemini rafts or dinghies from the Kuber for landing in Mumbai. The Kuber, which was listed as missing by its owners, was picked up by the Coast Guards on November 27 and the beheaded body of its captain Amarsinh Solanki was found on board.

The arrested terrorist has confessed that the terrorists murdered the other four crew members on the Kuber. The names of the other crew members have been given as Dhiru Arjun, Balwant Prabhu, Natu Nanu and Ramesh Nagaji.

The captain was beheaded after the terrorists decided he was of no use to them.

Interrogation of the hostages rescued from the Taj Hotel also indicate the possibility of some terrorists escaping during the commando action. One of the hostages has reportedly told investigators that the terrorists he had interacted with were different from those shot by the commandos.

There is also the mystery of the mobile phone belonging to journalist Sabina Sehgal Saikia, who died in the terror attack. Her relatives who got the authorities to track the phone were told that the signals from the device were picked up from Raigad, across the sea from the Taj Hotel. Investigators are now trying to locate the device.

Mumbai, December 2
Investigators from the American Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the British Scotland Yard have begun investigating the terror attacks in Mumbai which claimed the lives of six US and three UK nationals. The FBI registered a case to seek the interrogation report of the lone terrorist arrested.

According to sources here, the team includes specialists in technological warfare and communication experts, who are probing the terrorists’ usage of advanced technology, including global positioning services and communication devices like Blackberry and Internet telephony.

Interrogation of the lone terrorist arrested by the police, whose name has been given variously as Mohammad Ajmal Amir Iman and Ajmal Qasab, has revealed that the terrorists were in contact with their handlers via devices like Blackberry and mobile telephones equipped with Internet access.

Commandos who stormed the Taj Hotel also recovered at least one Thurraya satellite telephone from the terrorists.

New Delhi, December 2
In a relief to Murli Deora, the Election Commission today gave him a clean chit saying the petroleum minister did not violate the model code of conduct when he referred to taking a decision on the fuel prices after the Assembly polls in six states.

EC sources said the commission looked into the video clippings and found no substance in the complaint made against Deora. He had come under attack last week for his remarks on fuel prices after the conclusion of the polls.

Sources said Deora did not announce that a reduction would be effected. He only said a decision on the issue would be taken after the polls. BJP had approached the EC seeking action against Deora following which the commission sought explanation from the minister.

In his reply, Deora said he had not violated the model code of conduct for elections saying he indicated only a likely review of fuel prices.

Comprising six Assembly constituencies, Ganganagar district is all set to witness an interesting battle in the ensuing elections. All major political parties — the ruling BJP, the Congress and the BSP — have worked hard to woo voters. Going by the political history, by and large, there has always been a direct fight between the Congress and the BJP, but this time the “over ambitious” BSP has added colour to the electoral scene. The BSP appears to have made its presence felt here, but still it may not be able to influence the voters. However, it may upset the calculations of both the Congress and the ruling BJP.

Ganganagar: This constituency has 1,66,622 voters and a total of 13 candidates are in the fray. They are Raj Kumar Gaur (Congress), Radhey Shyam (BJP), Satyavan (BSP) and independents Kewal Madan, Ishwar Chander Aggarwal, Gajendra Singh, Puran Ram, Bhajan Lal, Maninder Singh Mann, Rajesh Bharat, Sanjay Sharma, Satya Pal and Subash Chander.

Sadul Shahar: This constituency has 1,71,375 voters and a total of nine candidates are in the fray. The contestants are sitting MLA and former minister Gurjant Singh (BJP), Santosh Sarahan (Congress), Shamsher Singh (BSP), Het Ram Beniwal (CPM), Krishan Goswami (LJP), Banwari Lal (Bharatiya Bahujan Party) and independents Mahesh Budania and Ram Kumar.

Anupgarh: This constituency has 1,79,221 voters and a total of nine candidates. The candidates are Kuldip Indora (Cong), Jeet Singh Adiwal (BSP), Pawan Kumar Duggal (CPM), Harnek Singh Kaler (BJP), Kishan Lal (Jago Party), Het Ram (RVP) and independents Patram Bawari, Bagga and Bahadur Ram.

Aizwal, December 2
An estimated 75 per cent voters today exercised their franchise to elect the sixth Mizoram Assembly. Elections ended peacefully at 2 pm.

“'The polling went off peacefully in the entire 1,026 polling stations across the state. We are expecting a 75 per cent turnout,” election officials said.

“Owing to geographical and communication difficulties, we are unable to ascertain the final poll turnout in time,” they added.

Some polling stations in remote areas are not accessible by motorable roads.

State DGP Lalrokhuma Pachuau said the polling went off without any untoward incident.

The Church-sponsored Mizoram People’s Forum (MPF) erected pandals in each polling station, where voters without identity cards were being helped to find their names in the voter lists. MPF volunteers were also seen patrolling the streets to prevent candidates and their campaigners from buying votes in the last minutes.

Today’s ballot sealed the fate of Chief Minister Zoramthanga of the Mizo National Front, former Chief Minister Lal Thanhawla of the Pradesh Congress and Brig T. Sailo of the United Democratic Alliance. — UNI