Television channels sought to defend themselves by saying that 26/11 was an ‘unprecedented situation’ for the media as well

NATIONAL Security Guard (NSG) Director-General Jyoti Krishan Dutt was monitoring the high-risk operation at Mumbai’s Nariman House on the morning of November 28. His commandos were sliding down an IAF helicopter onto the roof of the building seized by Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorists when his wife called him on his mobile phone. “They are coming down,” she suddenly exclaimed during the conversation.

“I asked her if she could see them and she said it’s live on television,” Dutt recounts.

The horrified NSG chief immediately called the then Intelligence Bureau chief P C Haldar and then Home Secretary Madhukar Gupta. “I told them that this live telecast needed to be stopped immediately. The channels were giving out details on the number of our men slithering down,” recalls Dutt, now retired.  

It was not the first time security agencies battling the Lashkar attackers during the 26/11 attacks on India’s financial capital were feeling compromised by the unrelenting TV news coverage of the counter-terror operations, much of it live. Security and intelligence agencies knew that the terrorists and their handlers in Pakistan were in touch over the phone and intercepts of those calls had shown that information gleaned from the TV coverage was being passed on to them.

This had even been communicated to the Central Government through the Union Home Ministry and it was decided to ask the channels to pipe down and not blow the cover of security forces. But by the time the Information and Broadcasting Ministry got moving and dispatched letters to the channels, it was evening on November 27 — almost 24 hours after the attacks had begun and scores killed.

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