But after two days of intense patrolling the Coast Guard failed to find any suspicious vessel, leave alone a Pakistani ship. On 22 November, Singh wrote back to its Delhi-based headquarters asking the principal director (operations) for a more specific, actionable intelligence like the colour or size of the vessel, the name or the kind of vessel, and if possible, some coordinates. The Coast Guard headquarters in turn wrote to the IB asking for specifics on the vessel. But the IB had nothing more to add to its first communique. On 23 November, the Coast Guard again wrote to the IB asking for 'specific, actionable intelligence', and the latter communicated back saying that if there was any more intelligence on the matter, the same would be conveyed to them.
The first, and in this matter also the last, location of the suspected LeT vessel -- as tracked and reported by the IB -- was 22 nautical miles (50 km) outside Karachi in the outer anchorage area which was way inside the Pakistani waters. The Indian Coast Guard can only intercept or board a vessel once it crosses the IMBL. However, from 21 to 26 November, boarding parties of Meera Behn (fast patrol vessel), Amrit Kaur (fast patrol vessel), Vijaya (offshore patrol vessel), and one inshore patrol craft boarded and inspected 276 Indian fishing vessels plying in the Indian waters. But all the 276 fishing boats which were boarded and checked by Coast Guard patrolling parties were clean; the sailors on board were bona fide Indian fishermen. At any given time there are 60,000 registered Indian fishing boats in the Arabian Sea, of which roughly 10,000 fishing boats are in the waters around the IMBL. The 276 Indian fishing boats searched between 21 and 26 November were all sailing close to the IMBL. On the night of 26 November, when the terrorists finally disembarked off a speedboat at Cuffe Parade in Mumbai, six Coast Guard vessels and two Dorniers were patrolling the Indian waters along the IMBL.
Through the night Singh made several calls to his commanding officers wanting to know how the terrorists had sneaked in by the sea (by now it was quite clear that the speedboat recovered from the fishermen colony belonged to the terrorists) and managed to give the Coast Guard patrolling vessels the slip. The terrorists could not have travelled by the speedboat in the high seas and must have definitely been dropped a few miles off the Mumbai coast by some bigger vessel. So, did the suspected LeT vessel the IB had first tipped them about sailed all the way to Mumbai and then lowered the terrorists in a small speedboat? Or did the terrorists sail to Mumbai in some merchant vessel and then got on to the dinghy? The Indian intelligence and investigating agencies were groping in the dark, looking for answers. And these baffling questions kept haunting Singh through the night. DG Coast Guard, Delhi, wanted to know if it was possible for any Pakistani vessel to enter the Indian waters despite the high alert. Singh on his part was assured that he and his team had not left any stone unturned since the IB alert, and for any Pakistani vessel to enter the Indian waters was simply not possible.
The next morning he took an Indian Airlines flight and landed in Mumbai at 9.45 am Singh drove straight to his Worli office; the roads were deserted and an otherwise one-and-a-half-hour journey from Santacruz airport to Worli was completed in twenty minutes. At around 12.30 pm the commanding station officer (operations) of Coast Guard at Worli received a call from the Western Command of the Navy asking him to intercept a merchant vessel called MV-Alpha which was headed towards Gujarat. The Indian Navy suspected that the terrorists had used this vessel to cross into Indian waters. Singh immediately alerted one of its vessels called Samar, which after three hours of hot pursuit intercepted the said merchant ship that had twelve Ukrainian crew members on board. After eight hours of rummaging, the Coast Guard cleared the ship of suspicion -- it was headed to Alang port for shipwrecking.
Image: An Indian Coast Guard ship takes part in a demonstration near Bombay.
Photograph: Punit Paranjpe/Reuters
Also see:
'US erred in not shutting down Lashkar, Jaish after 9/11'
Video: The fire that engulfed the Taj
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