Mumbai a target for terrorists

By Golden Reejsinghani

Terrorists are like black shadows that stealthily come in the night and do their work. Mumbai is known as a safe city and the people living in this city always thought Afghanistan, Kashmir and Pakistan were soft targets for terrorists. But now Mumbai is also under their fire. Terrorists ran amuck on the streets of Mumbai spraying bullets and lobbying grenades on innocent people without making the concession for the old , infirm , women , children and sick people their main aim was to destroy the very fabric of Mumbai and to kill the spirit of the cosmopolitan nature for which it is famous.

In 1993 the first bomb blast ripped the city apart. But the denizens of Mumbai rose up like a proverbial phoenix from the ashes and rebuilt the city and this continued till today but this did not go down well with the terrorist and therefore they tried many more times to bring Bombay and its people to their knees. Some of the terrorist attacks which followed the 1993 carnage are given below.

August 28 , 1997 – Bomb blasts took place near Jama Masjid injuring 3 people
January 24,1998- Malad 1 person got injured
February 27, 2008 – Virar – 9 people got injured.
December 2, 2002 – Blast in BEST Bus at Ghatkopar.
December 6, 2002 – Mumbai Central Railway station 25 people got injured.
January 27, 2003 – Vile Parle killing 1 and injuring at least 25.
March 13 , 2003 - Mulund Railway station killing 11 and injuring 80
August 25, 2003 – Two taxis were ripped apart in the morning in Mumbai.
July 11, 2006 – Serial Blasts took place at 7 places in the evening killing 225 and injuring 890 innocent citizens.
July 29, 2003 - Ghatkopar killing 3 and injuring 34 people.

This time around the terrorists wanted to really kill the spirit of the city and aim at destroying the pride of Mumbai when inconceivable terror and over whelming feeling of fear and anxiety returned to Mumbai’s Streets on Wednesday night killing more than 25 people and injuring at least 327 people including the ATS chief < anti terrorism squad chief > Mr. Hemant Karkare, additional commissioner Ashok Kamte and the encounter specialist Mr. Vijay Salaskr. All these top notch officials laid their life for the love of the country fighting bravely with the terrorists. .

The main aim of these terrorists was to bring a dead end to the country’s commercial center Mumbai .The terrorists who attacked Mumbai moved about in groups of two’s and three’s and attacked the innocent people on the roads all over the city, setting off inter connected numerous blasts and gunshot in many localities across the city including the CST train station and two posh five star hotels – Oberoi trident and the Taj Mahal Hotel. These two hotels are pride of Mumbai , especially the Taj Mhal hotel which is known as a heritage hotel and every tourist envy, the terrorist tried their best to d0 9/11 to the hotels like they did to twin towers in USA and most recently to Marriott hotel in Pakistan, but in spite of their best efforts the two hotels took all the beating right on their bellies and stood like two sentinels looking them squarely in the eye and challenging them to destroy them, today the terrorists are all smoked out of the hotels and their dead bodies removed to the morgue except for one Azam Amir Kassam a 21 year old who is from Faridkot which is in Pakistan, he is the only one who is captured alive and who is spilling the beans on his comrades.

The terrorists arrived in the city through the sea route with hand grenades, Automatic machine guns and a large amount of explosives. The terrorists did not even refrain from harming hospitals like the GT and the Cama hospital.

Eye witness Santosh singh said,‘Hand grenades, automatic machine guns and rifles were used by the terrorists to spread unimaginable terror and kill the innocent people. Unfortunately Non –resident Indians and the policemen were the major targets of these people”

Eye witnesses recounting Tales of Horror

TAJ: Many were the people who were trapped inside the two prestigious hotels, according to one eye witness Jaisingh Giakwad Patel, NCP MP from Beed said “he was staying in room 319 in Taj hotel and he saw that the terrorists were well equipped. Around 9.45 p.m. “I was watching TV when I heard gunfire I thought these must be fire crackers, but when this continued for sometime I called up the reception and I was told not to open the door because the hotel was under siege from terrorists. whole night the firing continued and the sound of grenades shattered the silence of the night, the terrorists forcibly opened the doors of foreign nationals and they were taken hostages the terrorists positioned themselves in strategic locations around the hotel and anyone who dared to peep out of their room was shot down in cold blood. All this time I had nothing to eat I survived on 3 fruits, a few bottles of cold drinks and water till I was rescued by NSG commandos 2.30”.

CHATRAPATI SHIVAJI TERMINUS TRAIN STATION: Ramakrishna Athyale who has a pan shop went to the CST station to catch a train at 9.10 p.m. when he had just boarded the train he heard the gun shots. In a second of minutes People were running all over the station.

VILE PARLE: Ram Prasad Singh was on the road in his car when the taxi near the fly over exploded “I was 500 meters away from the place where the taxi exploded and everything was surrounded in smoke and the vehicle that contained the bomb blew into bits and pieces.”

COLABA: “I and my friends were eating outside at a road side stall when we heard gunshots and all the people were running helter skelter this occurred around 9.55 p.m At that moment I and my friends could not think of anything but run”. – Ramprasad Sanghvi executive.

WADI BUNDER: Amina Sheikh was an eye witness to the blast that took place near the BPT Colony at wadi bunder near the sandhurst road , recounts that “ it was a very scary situation to face when I saw many dead and blown away to pieces when the bomb exploded in a taxi stationed outside the hutments colony”.

It is bewildering to see how innocent citizens are being wiped out by the terrorists. And disgusting to see these terrorists killing people at will There must be some solution to this nagging problem-to clear terrorists from the city it took 52 hours of hard work and back breaking labor along with this there were many who lost their lives, many who are permentaly maimed, many who have lost their jobs in these days of recessions. Who is going to give these people back their loved ones, their jobs and what about the trauma, people who have seen the carnage at close quarters will carry this trauma throughout their lives, there must be some solution to the problem and this can be solved only if all the governments of the world get together and start a fight against terrorists and countries harboring these terrorist the attacks are becoming very frequent every country in the world is being targeted by these dark forces because they feel invincible-somebody has to make them realize that they are not invincible and the start should be made by India because it has seen the worst attack of terrorism in this century. India needs to establish a national terrorist law and its approach in dealing with the terrorists should be even handed. There is an urgent need to damp down the temperature in the country and along the lines of L.O.C. India also needs a united policy direction at the national level to deal with terrorism.