Chougule was not prepared for what he saw. The ground was covered with scattered food, shards of glass, and puddles of blood; an eerie silence prevailed, and wounded people staggered around or lay on the ground.
The bomb squad men pitched in with the local police officers and the passers-by who had stopped to help, extricating people trapped in the debris.
One of his officers panted up to summon Chougule. ‘Sir, we have located the centre of the blast. It’s in the basement car park.’
The scene in the basement was even more horrific. The car park could accommodate about 200 cars, and many lay damaged and wrecked. Several cars were flattened by the two ceiling slabs that had collapsed. A mangled blue Maruti seemed to be where the explosion had happened. Thankfully the pillars had remained intact, reducing the extent of carnage and allowing the bomb squad and fire brigade to begin removing the injured. In at least six cars, the drivers were found dead behind the steering wheel. The air in the basement reeked of lead azide, a key component in explosives. The noxious gas was so strong that it was difficult to breathe.
The first thing Chougule did was to ask the officers and men to see if there was another bomb-laden vehicle in the basement. Chougule knew that terrorists around the world, including the Irish Republic Army (IRA), the Amal militia of Lebanon and the PLO, always set up bombs in such a manner that a second blast would follow the first by half an hour to forty-five minutes. The second one was intended to kill the rescue workers and the police. Zanjeer and the EDM 97 were brought in the basement and a search was initiated. Within thirty minutes, they had combed the basement but did not find any other bomb.
JCP (crime) M.N. Singh arrived. Chougule and his officers sprang to attention. Singh turned to Chougule. ‘What kind of bomb was this?’
‘Sir, it seems to be some kind of plastic explosive. I think it was RDX.’
‘Was it a time bomb left in a bag?’
‘Difficult to say anything right now, but from what I have seen, the bomb was kept in a Maruti 800.’
‘A car bomb?’ Singh’s forehead creased.
‘It could be. The amount of explosives used was much more than a few kilograms.’
‘Kilograms of explosives?’ Singh sounded incredulous.
‘Absolutely, sir. They must have used at least forty or fifty kilograms of some high-intensity explosives,’ said Chougule. ‘They’d have to carry that in a car.’
Singh was still trying to absorb this information when Pandhre came running towards them. The Air-India building at Nariman Point had been bombed. By the time they received this information, twenty minutes had passed since the explosion.
Singh left immediately while Chougule, asking his team to assemble in the van, paused to give instructions to the officers from the Palton Road police station involved in rescue work. ‘Tow out the vehicles in which the drivers have died. Do it very carefully. Don’t try to remove the slabs manually. Call a crane for the job. Empty the basement area. Search each and every car parked in the neighbourhood. Tow away any unoccupied or suspicious looking car.’
Chougule and his team took off in the van, sirens shrieking. They emerged at Horniman Circle, opposite the Town Hall, and sped off to the Air-India building.
The scene was no different there. Fire brigade personnel had already arrived and were busy removing debris and rescuing trapped people. Chougule and his men got out of the van and fanned out in three directions. One group went towards Hotel Oberoi and began inspecting the cars parked around it, and another towards the Express Towers to check the vehicles there. The third team began removing all cars from the area. Parked or unoccupied vehicles were towed away by the traffic police.
Chougule himself investigated the mangled Ambassador car that was obviously the source of the blast. After closely scrutinizing the skeleton of the car, Chougule knelt to look at the crater below. It was at least ten feet in diameter and seven feet deep. He decided to take another look from the basement.
Chougule stepped into the office of Gulf Air, on the ground floor. The office was a pile of debris. Several bodies lay around— well-dressed executives, whose starched white shirts were dyed red with their own blood. These nightmarish scenes will haunt me forever, he thought. Hi-tech terrorism, as was practised in Lebanon, Palestine and Ireland, had finally arrived in India.
He slowly climbed down to the basement and stood looking up at the destroyed car. Pandhre and Kadam, another member of the BDDS, came to him and reported that cars had been evacuated from the whole area. Nothing suspicious or dangerous had been found in the vicinity. Chougule went out again and stood facing the Oberoi building, with Pandhre, Kadam and Zarapkar. Towards their left, there seemed to be a mass exodus of office employees. Chougule glanced at his watch. It was 3.45 p.m.
That’s a strange time to leave work,’ he commented.
‘Sir, they’re panicking. With two blasts in the business district, they’re afraid that they’ll be next,’ Pandhre said.
‘I have never seen the fear of death in the eyes of so many people,’ said Chougule, almost to himself.
The scene was both funny and tragic. People were scampering to get away from Nariman Point, where all the skyscrapers were clustered, to Churchgate, jostling for space inside BEST buses, fighting for a taxi. In normal times, Chougule would have laughed at the sight. Today, however, it seemed tragic that a bombing in the city could cause such terror.
The bomb squad conferred with M.N. Singh and concluded that least forty-five kilograms of RDX had been used in the car. Chougule was again approaching the basement, when a constable ran to him. ‘Sir, there is a message which has just come in. There has been an explosion in Masjid Bunder.’
Chougule stopped in his tracks. Once again the bomb squad ran towards the van. In a couple of minutes, the van was flying towards Masjid Bunder, to yet another site of tragedy.
Apart from the BDDS of the city police, there was an independent office of the BDDS at Sahar Airport, headed by Major (Rtd.) Vasant Laxman Jadhav. This bomb squad was part of the Ministry of Civil Aviation. Jadhav was appointed the bomb squad chief after twenty-six years in the Indian army, where he had been handling explosives since 1981.
The police control room had also notified Jadhav of the blast at the BSE at 1.45 p.m., shortly after Chougule was informed. Jadhav had much more experience than Chougule or any other officer in dealing with such emergency situations.
Jadhav and his team left in their jeep and Ambassador car. As their office was at the other end of the city from the BSE, it would take them an hour to get there. As they were driving through the Mahim area, they heard about the second explosion.
At 2.55 p.m., Jadhav’s jeep passed the Manish Nagar building at Worli. Suddenly, an explosion tore through the area. The two BDDS vehicles were thrown at least a foot high. Both were dented and their windscreens shattered. The team was badly shaken.
Jadhav halted the convoy to inspect the damage to their vehicles and the area. Then, in swift succession, he heard about the explosions at Masjid Bunder and at the Plaza Cinema. As he debated where to go, he heard that Sahar Airport had also been hit. That was a clear priority for Jadhav, and he and his team returned to their base.
The congestion at Masjid Bunder after the blast was such that it was nearly impossible for even the police to enter the area. The blaring sirens allowed the BDDS team to finally get into the market but they knocked down a couple of parked scooters, damaged a handcart and a bicycle. At 4 p.m., the van reached the Matruchhaya building. Though this was where the second blast had taken place, only the Pydhonie police had rushed to the scene as the rest of the force was occupied with the Air-India building and the BSE. By the time the BDDS team arrived, most of the dead and injured had been shifted to JJ Hospital.
Chougule conducted the mandatory search around the mangled scooter, which seemed to have carried the explosives, and of vehicles parked in and around Narsi Natha Street and then walked Zanjeer through. But he hesitated before declaring the area
clear, because at the other two sites the bombers had aimed for destruction on a much larger scale than was seen here. He asked Pandhre to take the EDM 97 and scan the street. ‘The scooter didn’t carry more than twenty kilograms of explosives. We’d better be safe than sorry.’
Chougule pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his brow. The handkerchief reminded him of his wife Madhuri, who had tucked it in that morning. The thought of her had a tranquilizing effect.
‘Sir, a message just came in from control,’ Kadam interrupted his reverie. ‘There has been another blast. At the RPO, Worli, about an hour ago.’
The van took off towards Worli. As soon as they reached Annie Beasant Road, the van ground to a halt as this main artery connecting the western suburbs to southern Bombay was clogged with bumper-to-bumper traffic. A while later, a trickle of cars started to get through, as traffic police swung into action and began diverting the vehicles. The van reached Worli only at 5 p.m.
The blast here had been the most destructive. Though about two hours had passed since the detonation, the area was still enveloped in a grey pall of smoke.
Chougule got out of the van very slowly. He walked towards the cordoned area, looking around carefully. He noticed that the explosion had thrown up a lot of dust which had settled on everything—leaves of trees, roofs of parked cars, windows of buildings. He looked at a third-floor balcony, where several long ribbons were hanging on the clothesline. He wondered why anyone would wash so many ribbons, but then it dawned on him that originally it had been a six-yard sari. He stumbled over some object. He looked down and stifled a scream—it was a woman’s arm, blown off at the elbow. The red bangles on the wrist were still intact. Further on, he found a leg severed at the knee, clad in a Nike shoe and black trousers; and some distance on, a black mass he could identify as a head but so covered in blood and dust that he could not tell whether it was a man’s or a woman’s.
Chougule sat on his haunches and buried his face in his palms. His men surrounded him. They should have been inured to this after the three blast sites they had visited that day, but nothing had affected them so badly.
Somehow, Chougule collected himself and set to work. They moved to investigate the huge crater that had been the centre of the blast. This time the explosives seemed to have been loaded on a jeep. They brought out the EDM 97 and other detectors. Zanjeer was already sniffing around for any more explosives.
Though he kept mechanically supervising the operations, Chougule had not fully recovered from the horror and he knew that he was not thinking as clearly as he needed to. Kadam approached in brisk strides. ‘Sir, the blast was so powerful that it shattered the glass for well over a mile. The Century Bazaar is badly ruined.’
Chougule nodded. ‘Have you checked all the vehicles in the vicinity? Any suspicious objects?’
‘We found nothing. This jeep alone would have done the job.’ Chougule saw the mangled remains of a BEST double-decker bus, now reduced to a ball of metal. Weak and dazed, he strolled aimlessly until Zarapkar and Pandhre joined him.
‘Who could have done this and why?’ Zarapkar asked.
‘I can only think of one name,’ replied Chougule. ‘Dawood Ibrahim. But even he would not be capable of executing such blasts on his own.’
‘You mean the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam) or PLO must have chipped in?’ Pandhre said.
‘It could be anybody,’ Chougule said without conviction. ‘It could be the JKLF (Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front), Khalistani commandos or even the ISI. But I think Dawood has to be involved in this.’
‘But Dawood is a gangster, not a terrorist ...’ Zarapkar said.
‘None of the blasts have taken place in Muslim areas. Dongri, Mohammed Ali Road and Pydhonie are untouched. Bombs have gone off in areas which Muslims rarely frequent in large numbers, like Nariman Point, the BSE or even Masjid Bunder.’
‘But then why seek help from terrorist groups?’ Kadam interjected.
‘No gangster could bring in this much high-intensity explosives,’ Chougule said, ‘whether plastic or otherwise. This is RDX. You cannot buy this stuff in the open market. Dawood would need backing. He’d need a powerful and resourceful terrorist organization. They must have used at least eighty kilograms of explosives here.’
As Chougule spoke, the radio in Kadam’s hand came to life. A squawky voice directed the bomb squad to the Plaza Cinema at Dadar. Without a word, they took off.
This time the roads were relatively deserted as panic had driven most people home. They drove at eighty kilometres an hour, a speed unimaginable on normal days. They had started from Worli at 6.15 p.m. and were at the Plaza at 6.30 p.m.
For the BDDS team, despite the numerous sites they had visited that day, the horror struck them afresh at each one. As they finished their search of vehicles parked in the vicinity and an inspection of the location, and moved into the cinema hall itself, their radio informed them that bombs had exploded in two trains at Bandra and Dadar, and in three hotels: the Sea Rock and the two Centaurs in the western suburbs.
Chougule debated where they should go first. He also wondered whether they should divide up the team. As the team talked it over, the police control room informed them that the blasts in the trains were just rumours. Chougule heaved a sigh of relief. After finishing their work at the Plaza, they decided to go to the Sea Rock.
Pandhre was walking Zanjeer around the Plaza. Chougule, going to meet them, suddenly realized that the entire road was empty. Not a single vehicle could be seen. The sun had set only a few minutes before, but the emptiness and hush were like that before dawn.
The walkie-talkie crackled again. ‘Crime asks the bomb squad to proceed to Worli. There’s a suspicious Maruti van. The orders are immediate.’
Chougule abandoned their plans of going to the Sea Rock. The bomb squad headed back to Worli, to the Siemens factory.
By the time Major Jadhav returned to Sahar Airport, it was 5 p.m. The journey through the crowded roads had taken a long time. The BDDS squad and officers from the Sahar police station immediately went to bay 54 of the airport, where the hand grenades had been thrown.
There was a crater at the spot of explosion, at least a foot in diameter and three feet deep. Jadhav dug his fingers into the soil and found several small steel balls. He collected these and a handful of soil to take to his office. He would send the samples to the forensic laboratory for chemical analysis. Before he left, he instructed the police to do a panchnama, the official documentation of the crime scene and of the area.
Jadhav and the other officers found solace in the thought that the grenades had not damaged any aircraft, but had only hit the ground.
After passing through several diversions and detours, Chougule and his squad reached the Siemens factory at 9 p.m. The vehicle they had been called to inspect was a maroon Maruti van, which looked as if it had been recently battered. Its rear windscreen was shattered and shards of glass still dangled from it.
Chougule conferred with the officers from the Worli police station. The police constables and bomb squad men started to disperse the curious onlookers. When the crowd was pushed back to a safe distance, Chougule, Pandhre and Zarapkar went up to the van. They peered through the windows, but there was nothing immediately evident which indicated the presence of explosives. Then Chougule spotted two black bags lying on the back seat.
Chougule walked towards the driver’s door and inspected the lock minutely. He had read about the instances in Ireland and Lebanon where the bomb mechanism was fitted in the lock, which detonated the moment somebody tried to open it. But it looked as though the lock was clear of any wires.
He took a long rope with a hook on one end. He slowly tucked the hook in the handle and walked away. Some distance away, he turned and tugged gently at the rope. That way, if the bomb went off, the damage to limb and life would be minimal. The door flew open. The remaining doors were opened using the same technique.
Pandhre looked inside the car, be
low the seat and on the dashboard. The two rexine bags on the back seat, both about two feet in length and a foot in width, were carefully pulled out and put on the ground.
It was Zanjeer’s turn now. He twitched his nose as he sniffed, lifted his face as if to exhale and then again dipped his nose towards the bag. It was as if the dog wanted to make sure. All eyes were on him. Once again Zanjeer inhaled and twitched his nose, but this time he’d made a decision. The dog looked towards Pandhre, then directly at the bag and barked three times. A hush descended on the police officers. Beyond a doubt, the bags contained explosives.
Chougule stepped towards the bag, his heart thumped wildly. In those brief moments it took to walk three steps to the bags, he thought of his wife and his son. Then he pushed those thoughts aside so that he could do his work.
He bent and unzipped the bag. He was certain that the zip was not a detonator, yet he could feel his heart beating as he waited for the loud explosion. But nothing happened.
Chougule exhaled in relief. He began to examine the contents: there were five AK-56 rifles, but none were loaded. Zarapkar moved towards the other one and unzipped it casually. He extracted two AK-56s, four hand grenades, several empty magazines and some live cartridges.
Pandhre, Zarapkar and Chougule searched the vehicle thoroughly. In the glove box, Chougule spotted a small packet containing a green rosary, used by Muslims during namaz, and a plastic bottle, half-filled with water, bearing Arabic inscriptions, which he guessed must have come from some holy spring. It seemed clear that the van and the weapons belonged to a religious Muslim. But why were they carrying weapons and why did they abandon them?
In the dashboard were xerox copies of registration papers in the name of one Rubin Memon, as well as a yellow receipt from the Mahim Petrol Pump. Someone paid Rs 200 for petrol on 11 March. He pocketed it for further inquiry.
Chougule handed over the van, bags and guns to the Worli police officers. He and his team returned to the office, reaching after midnight. The plans to visit the western suburbs were postponed till the next morning.