The coastal shadow
The Coast Guard's interception of the mystery boat off Gujarat is rooted in its futile search for the Lashkar-e-Taiba vessel that left Mumbai terrorised on 26/11
Sandeep Unnithan | | January 8, 2015 | UPDATED 08:37 IST
Illustration by SAURABH SINGHA mystery trawler fishing for trouble on the maritime border between India and Pakistan. A four-member crew said to have set fire to their boat to avoid capture. Hints that the interception of the suspected trawler off Gujarat on December 31 had averted a Mumbai 26/11-style attack gained credence when Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar insisted on January 5 that terrorists were on board. Security forces, Parrikar said, had done "the right job at the right time".
Coast Guard officials say the incident validates their new post-26/11 posture on coastal security. Navy and Coast Guard patrols boarded over 45,000 vessels along the Indian coast last year looking for security threats. "We have now demonstrated our capability to carry out intelligence-based operations, to swiftly shadow and intercept targets on the fringes of our Exclusive Economic Zone," a Coast Guard official told India Today.
At the heart of this operation lies an unsuccessful attempt to prevent the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) from striking at Mumbai on November 26, 2008. As many as 26 alerts warned that multiple locations, including hotels, in India's financial capital were likely targets.
On November 19, 2008, the Intelligence Bureau (IB) flashed a one-page alert to the Indian Navy and the Coast Guard. Stamped 'Top Secret, Most Immediate', it was signed by a joint director of the IB. A Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) intercept indicated a suspected LeT vessel at a precise latitude and longitude: 24 degrees 16'36" North and 67 degrees 0'04" East. "The boat was attempting to make an infiltration," the RAW's alert stated. It advised "necessary action to stop infiltration".
This was the LeT-owned fishing vessel Al-Husseini that would sail out four days later, on November 23, with its crew of 10 heavily armed terrorists.
A December 21, 2014 investigation by The New York Times, ProPublica and Frontline PBS cites classified documents leaked by NSA employee Edward Snowden to explain how British and American spy agencies had mounds of data on the LeT's preparation for the Mumbai attack but failed to connect the dots. They mentioned a November 18, 2008 CIA report to Indian counter-terror organisations on the location of a Pakistani vessel linked to a Lashkar threat against Mumbai.
This was most likely the origin of the IB's November 19 alert. Between November 19 and 23, the Coast Guard mounted Dornier air sorties and launched four patrol vessels and one hovercraft searching for this suspected LeT vessel off Gujarat. They boarded and searched 276 vessels along the west coast but evidently failed to notice the MV Kuber, an Indian trawler, which the terrorists had steered towards Mumbai to inflict mayhem. Despite repeated requests, the IB didn't give the Coast Guard further updates on the LeT vessel.
The Coast Guard action was in sharp contrast to the navy's indifference. Admiral Sureesh Mehta told a press conference on December 2, 2008, that the intelligence alerts the navy received were "not actionable". Naval intelligence officials say the position indicated on the IB alert was just 30 nautical miles off Karachi harbour and well within Pakistan's territorial waters. Crucially, the navy stamped 'NFA' or No Further Action on this alert and did not pass it on to the Mumbai-based Western Naval Command for further investigation. It was a monumental mistake because at that moment, over 30 warships of the western fleet were at sea for a 'Defence of Gujarat' exercise.
Six years later, a different story unfolded. A Coast Guard Dornier patrol aircraft took off from Porbandar airport within two hours of receiving an alert from the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) at 7.30 a.m. on December 31. The alert mentioned the 'entity' out at sea in contact with the Pakistani army and Maritime Security Agency. Four other Dornier patrol aircraft ran relay sorties out of Porbandar airport at 12 noon, 4 p.m., 7 p.m. and 10 p.m., ensuring one aircraft was always tailing the boat. A Coast Guard patrol vessel, the CGS Rajratan, closed in on the boat around 10.30 p.m. It began a frantic chase as it pursued the 20-footlong Rajratan, asking them to stop on the loud-hailer, all the while keeping a 600-metre safe distance from it. The chase ended at 3 a.m. when a fire engulfed the trawler-Coast Guard officials say the crew set fire to the boat themselves. At least two crew members are believed to have jumped overboard and drowned. Two others died in the blaze that ended when the vessel sank at 4.30 a.m. on December 2, nearly 365 km west of Porbandar.
The identity of the vessel is yet to be established. A Ministry of Defence statement on January 2 initially called it a fishing boat from Keti Bunder near Karachi that was "planning some illicit transaction in the Arabian Sea" indicating the possibility of a smuggling operation. NTRO intercepts showed the crew speaking with contacts ashore about "goods being delivered" and "payments being made into bank accounts", but no description of the cargo.
At least one other boat in the company of this mystery vessel is believed to have turned back towards Pakistan, well before the Coast Guard Dorniers arrived on the scene.
The biggest enigma in the episode remains the fire. Why would the crew choose a fiery death over surrender? Parrikar sees this as evidence for classifying them as terrorists. "A normal boat even carrying drugs can throw away the drugs and surrender. No one will kill himself unless you are motivated to do that," he said.
Coast Guard officials point at the October 1999 incident of the Japanese cargo ship MV Alondra Rainbow that was boarded by Indonesian pirates and sailed into the Arabian Sea. The pirates set fire to the ship in an attempt to scuttle it when Coast Guard ships closed in.
"The crew of this trawler were quite possibly trying to destroy incriminating evidence onboard and the fire likely went out of control," says Prabhakaran Paleri, former director-general, Coast Guard. The wreckage of the boat lies on the seabed nearly 2,000 metres beneath, preventing the recovery of any conclusive evidence.
The issue did, however, provide political parties with plenty of ammunition. Congress spokesperson Ajoy Kumar questioned the government's terror attack theory, leading BJP President Amit Shah to accuse them of "batting for Pakistan". Here, the angle the Congress completely missed, as one Coast Guard official put it, was that the entire post-26/11 coastal vigil-the inter-agency coordination, the doubling of the size of the Coast Guard-was a UPA legacy. A political brownie point they completely missed.
Follow the writer on Twitter @SandeepUnnithan
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