'Equipment, better intelligence could have altered 26/11 opn'

New Delhi, Nov 22 (PTI) The 60-hour-long operation that
neutralised the Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists during the terror
attack in India's commercial hub Mumbai last year could have
been handled in a different way had there been a "certain
type" of equipment and better intelligence, says the chief of
the anti-terror force which fought them.

The terrorists, who were in "top physical fitness", knew
the topography of the three locations -- Taj, Trident and
Nariman House -- so well that he feels the LeT men who
undertook the operation could have themselves done the recce
of the targets under assumed names.
J K Dutt, then the chief of National Security Guard
(NSG), said the Mumbai's elite Anti Terrorist Squad, which was
then headed by slain Indian Police Service (IPS) officer
Hemant Karkare, was a "young force" and the state police had
failed to realise for long that the gunmen throwing grenades
and firing at innocent people in various parts of the city
were not part of any gang war as they believed and that it was
a terror attack.
Dutt, who retired as the force chief in February this
year, told PTI in an interview that till the last moments of
the three-day operation the NSG did not have any concrete
intelligence on the number of men holed up in each of the
premises or even initially that the hotels had more than one
building. (More) PTI AKV
ANU


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