In the past when terrorist attacks happened around the country, it was retired Indian Space Research Organisation employee Unnikrishnan who typically telephoned his son Sandeep, an NSG commando deployed from the Bihar Regiment, asking him to switch on the television.

On the night of November 26, when Mumbai’s terror siege began, it was 31-year-old Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan who called his sleeping father and told him to switch on his television to watch the unravelling terror. It was the last conversation between the father and son.

On Thursday evening, after NSG commandos began their operations in Mumbai, when Unnikrishnan tried his son Sandeep’s number, it was answered by a close friend Sarvesh.

“He told me Sandeep had gone out on work but he did not say where. I suspected he had gone to Mumbai and his whereabouts were being kept a secret for operational reasons,” the former secretary to the director of the INSAT programme at ISRO stated.

It was a relative who was watching television that called the Unnikrishnan couple on Friday morning to tell them something was amiss with Sandeep in the course of the NSG commando operations in Mumbai.

Unnikrishnan did not tell his wife but tried his son’s telephone, and again found his friend at the other end.

“He told me he had just returned from the unit and had not heard anything about my son being a casualty. He told he would call as soon he heard something. When he did not call through the day I knew something was wrong,” says Unnikrishnan.

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