MINUTES after midnight on November 27, Mumbai lost three of its finest police officers: chief of the Anti-Terrorism Squad Hemant Karkare, Additional Police Commissioner Ashok Kamte and Inspector Vijay Salaskar. All three were killed in Rang Bhavan Lane near Cama Hospital in a Mumbai Police Toyota Qualis. These three deaths were the first time that night when the horror of 26/11 attacks hit home.

A reconstruction of the two-hour sequence of events that led to this, based on interviews and records accessed by The Indian Express, shows how and why these officers walked into a blind alley. It underlines how panic in the police clouded information from the field – Karkare and his men walked towards the scene of an encounter not knowing that it had ended 15 minutes earlier and that the terrorists were on the loose.

10:30 pm: As senior police officers rushed to various targets (as reported in the first part of this series) around the city without a clear deployment plan, Additional Commissioner of Police Sadanand Date and his wireless operator collected their bulletproof jackets and carbines from Malabar Hill police station. Via a detour of the Breach Candy area where the US Consulate is, they headed towards CST hearing that the terrorists had struck there.

10.45 pm: Ajmal Kasab and Abu Ismail reached Cama Hospital less than an hour after they had barged into the CST station at 9.55 pm and killed 52 inside the terminal.

11 pm: Date’s vehicle was stopped at the Metro Cinema junction by a security guard from Cama Hospital who told him there was firing in the hospital, barely a minute’s drive away. At 11.10 p.m., Date saw two bodies at the entrance to the six-storey Women and Children’s Ward building inside the Cama compound. The lift operator told him that "two armed men" had walked up the stairs to the terrace after stopping at least twice to round up a few people, including security guard Raosaheb Phunde, and locking them up inside a toilet.

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