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RUCNCLS/ALL SOUTH AND CENTRAL ASIA COLLECTIVE

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 MUMBAI 000261 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV PTER PINS IN
SUBJECT: MAHARASHTRA CONGRESS GOVERNMENT SUBMITS PARTIAL REPORT ON 
MUMBAI TERROR ATTACKS AS OPPOSITION ACCUSES IT OF SHIEDLING OFFICIALS 
 
REF: A. MUMBAI 233 
     ¶B. MUMBAI 169 
     ¶C. 2008 MUMBAI 560 
 
MUMBAI 00000261  001.2 OF 004 
 
 
CONGRESS GOVERNMENT OF MAHARASHTRA SUBMITS PARTIAL REPORT ON 
MUMBAI TERROR ATTACKS; OPPOSITION ACCUSES IT OF SHIEDLING 
OFFICIALS 
 
 
 
 
 
Ref: A) MUMBAI 233; B) MUMBAI 169; C)2008 MUMBAI 560 
 
 
 
¶1.  (SBU) Summary. On June 16, nearly seven months after the 
November 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, the Congress Party led 
Government of Maharashtra (GOM) submitted to the Maharashtra 
State Legislature its response paper, known as the Action Taken 
Report (ATR) on the Pradhan-Balachandran investigation 
committee's report (PBR) on Mumbai attacks.  The GOM did not 
present the complete findings of the PBR to the Maharashtra 
legislature, citing the sensitive nature of the report and the 
ongoing trial of the lone surviving terrorist Ajmal Kasab. 
Opposition Shiv Sena - Bharatiya Janata Party (SS/BJP) alliance 
members criticized the GOM for withholding of information and 
for covering up major security failures.  After the attacks, the 
GOM has made some efforts to modernize the police force and 
tighten security, but detractors believe that the efforts are 
too slow and inadequate.  Opposition parties will continue to 
underscore GOM failures, hoping that substandard security would 
be a campaign issue in the upcoming state elections. End Summary. 
 
 
 
GOM PRESENTS PARTIAL REPORT 
 
----------------------------- 
 
 
 
¶2. (SBU)  On June 16, Congress Party - Nationalist Congress 
Party (Congress/NCP) alliance-led Government of Maharashtra 
(GOM) submitted only the "Action Taken Report" (ATR); it did not 
submit the complete inquiry report on Mumbai attacks to the 
Maharashtra Legislature.  The inquiry report was authored by 
former bureaucrats Ram Pradhan and V. Balachandran (PBR 
henceforth).  The opposition Shiv Sena - Bharatiya Janata Party 
(SS/BJP) coalition wanted the PBR to be released in its 
entirety.  Their criticism of GOM is based on media leaks of the 
PBR.  Amid mayhem in the legislature, three state legislators 
from the two opposition parties were suspended for six years by 
the Speaker for unruly behavior.  Analysts viewed this as 
political posturing before the Maharashtra state elections set 
for September 2009.  The ruling Congress - NCP alliance appears 
worried that failure to make tangible improvements in Mumbai's 
security infrastructure would be held against them in the coming 
election.  Meanwhile, the opposition SS/BJP wants to underscore 
systemic security failures and lack of concrete steps after the 
Mumbai attacks.  Yet, at the same time, they want to be seen as 
the champions of an over-worked, under-paid police force, 14 
members of which were killed fighting the 11/26 attackers.  The 
opposition alleged that the GOM was shielding other guilty 
officials by not presenting PBR, while Chief Minister Ashok 
Chavan of the Congress Party said that the PBR could not be 
released because it had sensitive information, and because it 
could affect the trial of the lone surviving terrorist Ajmal 
Kasab (ref B) 
 
 
 
PBR FINDINGS 
 
------------- 
 
 
 
MUMBAI 00000261  002.2 OF 004 
 
 
 
¶3.  (SBU) V. Balachandran, one of the two authors of PBR (ref 
A), told Congenoff that individual elements of Mumbai's police 
showed immense courage in the initial hours of the attacks, 
especially in the hours before the National Security Guard (NSG) 
arrived from New Delhi.  However, disorganization among the 
police hampered their efforts.  Furthermore, he admitted, senior 
police officers, instead of directing the operation, rushed to 
the scene; the deaths of three such officials exacerbated the 
police's problems.  Balachandran also lamented that the police 
were out-gunned by attackers who were better armed and better 
trained than they were.  Balachandran reported that while there 
were several warnings about an imminent attack on Mumbai from 
the central intelligence agencies, none of these warnings 
constituted actionable intelligence. 
 
 
 
¶4.  (SBU) Julio Ribeiro, former Mumbai Police Commissioner, told 
Consul General that while the deaths of the three senior police 
officials aggravated the police's problems, it nevertheless 
insulated the police from the public anger that some politicians 
have faced in the wake of the attacks.  Political pundit and 
Loksatta editor Kumar Ketkar told Congenoffs that the public 
perception was that the Mumbai political establishment was dazed 
immediately after the attack; meanwhile central government 
circles understood the enormity of the situation, but wasted 
crucial hours in sending commando forces. 
 
 
 
POLITICAL MANUEVERINGS AFTER THE ATTACK 
 
---------------------------------------- 
 
 
 
¶5.  (SBU)  Balachandran explained to Congenoff that the PBR also 
identified Mumbai police failures and ways to correct them.  He 
catalogued 26 failures of the Mumbai police and provided 26 
concrete recommendations for improvement.  Committee Chair Ram 
Pradhan handed over the PBR to Ashok Chavan, the Congress chief 
minister of Maharashtra, on May 27. While admitting that he 
never read the PBR, the Chief Minister immediately delivered it 
to a committee headed by the senior bureaucrat in the GOM Home 
Affairs Ministry to draft the Action Taken Report (ATR) in 
response to the PBR.  The media has suggested that this move was 
a political tactic to stall a potentially explosive report. 
According to parliamentary procedure, the Government can submit 
an ATR, yet withhold the entire report from the state assembly. 
(Note: This tactic was used in dealing with the Srikrishna 
Commission Report which detailed Shiv Sena's role and police 
partisanship in the 1993 anti-Muslim Riots in Mumbai.  End Note) 
 
 
 
 
¶6.  (SBU) The two senior-most police officials at the time of 
the attacks were Maharashtra State Police Chief Anami Roy and 
Mumbai Police Commissioner Hasan Gafoor.  While Roy had already 
been moved to a new posting in March 2009 because of legitimate 
administrative reasons, Gafoor was not transferred until June 
13, just three days before release of the ATR. The state's 
opposition parties are asserting that Gafoor is being used as a 
scapegoat, and that transferring Gafoor was merely a cosmetic 
move by GOM.  The committee carried out detailed interviews with 
Roy, but obtained only limited written answers from Gafoor.  The 
opposition alleges that Roy has had the chance to fully explain 
his actions during the attacks while Gafoor has not had the 
chance. 
 
 
 
Measures Taken to Improve Security 
 
--------------------------------------- 
 
MUMBAI 00000261  003.2 OF 004 
 
 
 
 
 
¶7.  (SBU) As the political drama continues to unfold, the GOM 
has started to take steps to improve the security infrastructure 
of Mumbai.  The GOM established a Special Forces unit called 
"Force One", which is intended to be a Mumbai-based, Quick 
Response Team of young policemen, with better training and 
better arms than the ordinary policeman on the street.  The unit 
is intended to serve as a lighter, more mobile version of the 
NSG commanders (ref A). By mid-May, around 250 candidates were 
identified for Force One training and are currently being 
trained in Pune. 
 
 
 
¶8.  (SUB) Foreign Commercial Service sources indicate that GOM 
has ordered 1,000 new pistols for the police.  Senior Home 
department official P.K. Jain told Congenoff that GOM has 
decided to equip two-thirds of the policemen with firearms, a 
substantial increase from the pre-attack distribution of one gun 
per three officers.  Satish Saheny, another retired police 
commissioner of Mumbai, however, told us that the ordinary 
policeman - whether equipped with a gun or a baton - would 
always be at a disadvantage fighting terrorists.  He argued that 
"At the end of the day, the policeman believes that people are 
going to listen to him just because he is in uniform. Terrorists 
will not.  We need a crack team of plainclothes people, who will 
have the mandate to fight terror, and have special training to 
do it." 
 
 
 
¶9.  (SBU) Sahney's sentiments seem to reflect the current 
thinking in some of the higher police echelons in Maharashtra. 
Recently, the GOM held a special state-wide exam to recruit 
young officers directly into the ranks of the Local Intelligence 
Branch (state-level plain-clothes police, LIB), and has to date 
selected around 100 candidates.  Prior to this special 
recruitment program, the LIB was staffed by police personnel who 
alternated between LIB and regular police stations.  The former 
home minister R.R. Patil and the current Mumbai police chief D. 
Shivanandan are the architects of this new direct recruitment 
program in LIB.  Ribeiro warned that even Force One or direct 
recruitment to intelligence might not find many takers because 
these recruits would be sealed off from opportunities for extra 
income through corruption, which only regular police stations 
offer.  However, media reports indicate that the LIB exam had 
many takers, and that many of the candidates were motivated by 
the 11/26 attacks. 
 
 
 
¶10.  (SBU) The GOM has also identified land (some in North 
Mumbai, and some on the Konkan coast south of the city), to be 
used to station the National Security Guard (NSG), which 
ultimately liberated the two hotels.  The NSG and the GOI 
security establishment are mulling over the possibility of 
establishing NSG hubs in four metro locations in four corners of 
the country. 
 
 
 
¶11.  (SBU) From June 8 to 10, the Indian Coast Guard, Mumbai 
City and Maharashtra State Police, and the Indian Navy carried 
out a large exercise in sea vessel interception on the Arabian 
Sea.  Maharashtra has a poorly guarded 750 km coastline 
stretching from Gujarat in the north to Karnataka in the south. 
The Mumbai attackers were able to exploit this slipshod coverage 
when they landed on 11/26.  The lessons learned from the 
exercise are at this point undisclosed and have not been 
reported in media. 
 
 
 
¶12. (SBU) Chitkala Zutshi, former home Secretary of Maharashtra, 
 
MUMBAI 00000261  004.2 OF 004 
 
 
told congenoffs that immediately after the attacks, Jayant 
Patil, the new Home Minister of Maharashtra, developed a new 
informal mechanism for intelligence sharing.  Every Wednesday 
morning, Patil holds an informal discussion with the Central 
Bureau of Investigation (CBI), Intelligence Bureau (IB) 
officials posted in Mumbai, the Home Secretary, the Maharashtra 
State Police Chief, and Mumbai City Police Chief, to share 
intelligence warnings.  Prior to the attacks, the Mumbai 
representatives of the central agencies would write to their 
Delhi superiors, who would in turn inform the Maharashtra Police 
Chief.  However, Zutshi confirmed the finding of the PBR that 
actionable intelligence is rarely provided by central agencies. 
 
 
 
¶13.  (SBU) Comment:  In the immediate wake of the attacks, the 
Chief Minister and Deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra resigned 
because of public anger (ref C).  The legislative wing, 
believing that not only political leadership but career 
officials also must face the consequences for their inaction 
during the attacks, instituted the Pradhan-Balchandran Committee 
in December 2008.  Meanwhile, the GOM made some efforts to equip 
the police and to tighten the security procedures.  But these 
actions did not happen as fast as independent observers would 
have liked (ref A).  The code of conduct of national elections, 
in effect from April 3 to May 23rd, gave the GOM additional 
excuses for delay.   But given the nature of Indian bureaucracy, 
these efforts will continue to move at a glacial pace.  The 
political theatre in the Maharashtra legislature on presenting 
the ATR is just business as usual.  The SS/BJP alliance hopes 
that though terror and poor security did not provide political 
mileage in national elections, they may well become issues in 
state elections due this autumn.  End Comment. 
FOLMSBEE