Mumbai:
Amid public anger over Mumbai's latest terror attack - the fourth in eight years -Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan has disclosed that for the first fifteen minutes after three bombs exploded, he could not reach senior policemen or other officers because all mobile phone networks were congested.
This revelation will confound a city that 31 months ago went through India's worst terror strike ever - 166 people were killed in the three-day siege that's referred to as 26/11 after the day on which the attacks began. "One of the negatives that happened in the minutes after the blast was that mobile communication collapsed; networks were congested. I could not contact the Chief of Police or other key officials for 15 minutes," Mr Chavan said to NDTV this morning. He said wireless communication could not come to the rescue because it only works within a limited radius. Mr Chavan said he has stressed to the Central government the need for a version of a dedicated mobile network for the Maharashtra government. He said that in future, key officials will also be given satellite phones. (
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Despite the lessons learnt at such exacting cost from 26/11, other basics have yet to be actioned. Then, as now, there are huge holes in the city's security. A plan to install 5000 security cameras across Mumbai remains just a concept. Mr Chavan admitted that procurement of weapons, bulletproof vests, and even simple CCTV cameras is tangled up in red tape. He said officials are worried about signing off on contracts, or picking a supplier. "Procurement of equipment is a problem...people are afraid to deal with tenders...I have raised this with the PM and the Home Minister," he added. He said that among some bureaucrats, there is a concern that "Technology moves so fast, you buy something...and then it gets dated." He stressed, "5000 CCTVS were meant to be bought for Mumbai...that has not happened...I will see to it that this will happen...and it is expedited."
When? By Mr Chavan's own admission, the bombs that hit during Wednesday's rainy rush hour were designed to create maximum impact. Mr Chidambaram has described them as "a coordinated terror strike." Zaveri Bazaar- one of the targets- was targeted in 2003 with twin blasts. 54 people were killed then. Mr Chidambaram said despite the lack of intelligence alerts for Wednesday, there was no intelligence failure- a statement that provoked strong criticism from the Opposition and others. Mr Chavan tried to elaborate on the government's view. "It would be very harsh to conclude that because there was no intelligence, it was an intelligence failure," he said. "The possibility of generating intelligence is tough in an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) where only one-two people are involved. Nobody was tipped off; it was a simple kind of operation. Maybe very few people were involved. Specific actionable information is not possible for an operation like this."
Intelligence sources reveal that they are convinced that the group behind the latest blasts was a small one. Its members were careful not to communicate via cellphones or email. They built sophisticated bombs, two of which were packed with a kilo each of explosives. Cellphones were reportedly used to trigger them, but no SIM cards have been found at the locations of the blasts.
The government in Maharashtra is a coalition of the Congress and Sharad Pawar's Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). Mr Chavan said that the response to a crisis could be improved if the post of Home Minister, currently with RR Patil of the NCP, is transferred to the Congress.