Archaic guns,no ammo,all tied up with Govt red tape

•The team that first entered the Taj Hotel had all of one SLR and one .303.

•Bhagwat Kacharu Bansode,the first police officer to enter the Trident,had one revolver.

And the list goes on and on as the Ram Pradhan Committee is learnt to have detailed the vulnerability of a police force and how it fought the terrorists with its hands tied.

The report is said to underline how Maharashtra Deputy CM Chhagan Bhujbal — in his earlier stint back in 2000 — made it mandatory for every vendor to be approved by the Deputy CM’s office (his office) for any police purchase beyond Rs 25 lakh. This even after all regular sanctions were received.

Result: Bottlenecks,delays,no upgradation of equipment and ammunition.

It’s learnt that the committee has pointed to the specific instance of Sadanand Date,Additional Commissioner of Mumbai’s Central region,whose pistol did not work when he and his team confronted the terrorists at Cama Hospital.

The terrorists escaped,killing members of Date’s team besides injuring him. Date is said to have escaped because the terrorists probably thought he was dead.

The Director General of Police is said to have told the Committee that there was no ammunition for firing practice and that the last lot he received was 45000 AK-47 rounds in 2005.

The State Home Department contested this,saying ammunition was given in subsequent years too. But the Pradhan committee was not able to reconcile these differences and has taken serious note of this discrepancy between file and fact.

The committee,sources said,was also informed that ammunition worth Rs 65 crore is needed if a cop must fire at least 40 rounds annually. But only Rs 3 crore was received every year for the past five years,leading to serious lack of training.

On the equipment front,the Indian Ordnance Factory may have stopped making .410 Muskets and .303 rifles but the Maharashtra government’s draft weapon policy to change to AK47s,5.56 Insas Rifles,9 mm carbines and 7.62 SLRs received “in principle” approval only last June. This delayed approval meant cost-escalation.

According to reliable sources,the committee visited Pune — another sensitive security location and a potential terror target — where it dropped by at a police station.

It was said to be “aghast” by the level of preparedness there. When asked to show their bullet- proof jackets,the police brought a 1990s vintage jacket that weighed 10-12 kg.

Besides these,it’s learnt that the committee highlighted other discrepancies:

•Standard Operating Procedures: According to the SoP,the Crisis Management Group should have been formed under a Joint Commissioner of Police immediately. But it never met.

The CMG is take charge of all control rooms but none of this happened. It’s learnt the committee observed a “lack of cohesion” in the Police Commissioner’s office.

What has particularly been pointed out is that the decision to remove the extra security at the Taj Hotel days before the attack despite intelligence threats was taken at the level of a senior police inspector while it should have been taken at a “higher level”.

Also,no debriefing took place after the incident and officials were only asked to file a plain report.

n Assault Mobiles: Just like the Quick Reaction Teams,this is supposed to be another anti-terror outfit with the Mumbai police located at seven points across the city. While they do get better arms and ammunition,the committee is learnt to have observed that these men are shuffled around every year making it “nothing more than armed police” — ineffective to deal with a 26/11 kind of an attack.

• Communication: With communication equipment outdated and out of range very quickly,the Pradhan Committee is said to have found that Mumbai police officials largely depended on private cellular phones for communication which too got jammed in course of time.

For a long time,sources said,the Mumbai police thought that the handlers were in the city and it was only through “fortuitous circumstances” that the phone link with Pakistan-based handlers was ascertained.