The most brazen and longest terror attack on India has left several red faces in the government with facts emerging that not only was there advance intelligence about this attack but even the time to have possibly thwarted it. But what happened, instead, was a case of competitive mistrust in the entire security establishment leading to a catastrophic misjudgement.

The Sunday Express has learnt that on November 19, just about a week before the attack, one of the intelligence agencies had circulated “top secret” information on the basis of an intercept the previous day that an attack had been planned from sea on Mumbai and would be effected very soon. While November 26 was not mentioned as a precise date, sources said, another date before the day of the attack was specified. It also said the terrorists could probably come by an Indian fishing trawler.

This input was passed on for further analysis to the National Security Council Secretariat and Joint Intelligence Council. Subsequently, this was shared with the Navy and the Coast Guard. Also, it was sent in the form of an advisory to Maharashtra. However, somewhere through the entire process, the seriousness and authenticity of the input were interpreted differently by different agencies. State agencies now claim such alerts had become a regular feature in recent months which, too, is arguably correct in many respects. Some have argued that the input was not specific enough and only mentioned the “possibility” of a trawler being used.

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