Over the next four hours, this nondescript room would witness the shocking unpreparedness of the Mumbai Police to take on the attackers whose number had doubled as Shoaib and Umer teamed up with Abdul Rehman Bada and Abu Ali, who entered the hotel from the main entrance five minutes before them at 9.38 pm.

CCTV footage from inside the hotel shows the four terrorists gathering first inside Room 551 of the heritage wing for 12 minutes and later in Room 632 for nearly two hours with minor interruptions in between.

On both occasions, Nangre-Patil and his team got this information instantly from the hotel’s security staff. The first chance to restrict or engage the Lashkar men presented itself within an hour after they had raided the hotel, the second came about two hours later as the sequence of events recorded by the hotel’s CCTV cameras show:

22:27: All four terrorists enter Room 551 and stay inside until 22:39 when two of them emerge from the room. They enter an adjoining room and bring out a hostage.

22:48: The duo take the hostage back into Room 551 and stay inside until 22:54.

22:54: One terrorist comes out of Room 551 to take a look in the corridor for a minute and returns to the room.

come out of the room and go back into it individually before leaving it together at 23:13 and spreading out. As soon as they noticed the movements of the attackers at 22:27, the Taj security staff asked Nangre-Patil to seize the opportunity and block the terrorists in that room. Nangre-Patil is learnt to have said that special forces were on their way and would take over the task.

... contd.