•How much did you know at that time?

We knew that three places had been attacked. TV had also told us about the attacks at Leopold Café, VT station, Cama Hospital. By the time we left, it had more or less got confined to the Taj, Oberoi, and Nariman House. We looked upon it as three venues. It was only after we came here that we realised that it is not just Taj Heritage but also Taj Tower and we also have the Oberoi along with the Trident.

•You were not particularly familiar with Mumbai.

No.

•When you were with the CBI, you used to keep raiding government officers here.

That was a different job altogether. By the time we came here, it was almost like five venues and our operation started with the Trident.

•The time lag between your getting the orders and your troops getting to these places could have been shortened?

There are two ways of looking at it. One, if you look at the time when the terrorists attacked, that will be around 9 pm or 2100 hours of November 26, and as I mentioned, first they thought it was a gang war. It was only later that they confirmed that this was an act by terrorists and once that happened the state machinery got into motion. They had to get the clearance from the Chief Minister who requisitioned the NSG. We started our operation on November 27 at 9 am. But if you look at it from the time that we took off from Delhi after we had received orders for moving to this place, then we got the order at about 1 am and by 3 am we were in the aircraft, by 5 am we were here, by 9 am the operation had started. I had been able to talk to the DG Maharashtra and they had lined up all the vehicles we required.

... contd.