Here is an edited excerpt from the book The Scout about David Headley’s execution of the bloodbath at Nariman House in Mumbai
David Headley sat with Faiza Outalha in front of the television watching events unfold in Mumbai. The chaos on the different channels gave him an uncanny feeling of deja vu. As he saw the now-so-familiar locations, he remembered every visit to every target. He recollected the Shamiana restaurant at The Taj, the Tiffin at the Trident. He remembered walking into the leopold Cafe, and his visit to the Nariman Chabad House. He closed his eyes during a brief commercial break and opened them to the bustling crowd at the CST. I did this, he thought, it was really possible because I scouted these venues. The skin of his arms prickled as he remembered walking into The Oberoi Trident on an impulse, and found it to be a good target. He had gone to the bank just outside the hotel to collect some funds that Tahawwur Rana transferred to him, when he saw the imposing glass-fronted entrance and decided to take a stroll inside.
Sajid Mir had told him that one of the buddy teams had managed to kill three senior police officers, including the head of the State ATS. That had to be an amen sign from Allah himself. It was surely a crushing blow to the Mumbai Police to have three of their best mowed down in one shot. As Sajid explained, the other two guys were heavyweights too.
David felt Faiza’s shoulder brush his as she shifted closer. They had reconciled a few weeks before. He glanced sideways at her. She was watching the television, her lips parted, an odd tension in the line of her shoulders. She, David knew was no one’s fool. He wondered how much she suspected. He froze as he suddenly realised that once the last bullet was fired, he, David Headley, would perhaps be the most wanted man in India.
Dr Dhaneshwar lanjewar was the Head of the Blood Bank at the JJ Hospital. He stayed in the residential campus adjoining the hospital, and his Sunday afternoon biryanis were legend. The phone in his living room rang and he got up to answer it. After listening to the caller for a couple of minutes he replaced the handset on the cradle, and walked into the bedroom where his wife was reading. ‘I’ve to go the hospital,’ he said. ‘There’s been some sort of bombing, shooting incident and casualties are expected.’ His wife, a long-time veteran of such abrupt calls to duty, shrugged expressively. ‘Make sure you take your blood pressure medicine, and send a message in case you need food,’ she cautioned. Two minutes later, he was striding towards his office along the cobbled footpaths of the hospital complex.
The blood bank normally stocked around 600 units of blood, and as a matter of professional expediency, the doctor also maintained regular contact with around 70 other blood banks in Mumbai, and a multitude of social service organisations. As he walked into the Casualty Department he met his assistant, Amit Suryavanshi, and colleague Dr Sonali Thorat.
‘Sir, we already have about 40 injured and more coming’, Dr Thorat said. ‘OK, you two meet me here along with Dr Ganesh Pachare and Kalyani Kulkarni. We will chalk out how to handle this inflow,’ Dr lanjewar said, hurrying behind his desk. Taking out his diary from the right hand drawer, he opened it and started dialling. They would require blood, and lots of it. He dialled the Estate Manager — they would need extra beds and intravenous poles to be put up too.
Babar Imran and Nazir approached the Chabad House in the Colabawadi area, on Shaheed Bhagat Singh Road. They had received precise information, which included the names of shops and buildings they must pass in order to reach their target. Headley’s directions and notes were painstakingly detailed. In that particular locality the Chabad House was also known as Nariman House, with a small faded sign identifying it as such. Not many people knew that the rather shabby looking five-storey structure was a Jewish-administered establishment.
Babar looked out for the purported gas station near the house, an adequate enough landmark. As they walked past it, he casually stooped and placed his IED near two parked cars. Straightening up, he continued to walk to the Chabad. The pair entered the building, and before continuing up the stairs, placed Nazir’s IED at the staircase of the ground-level parking lot. These two bombs would serve to add to the general confusion, and hopefully result in casualties. As they walked up the stairs, the IED at the gas station exploded. On the second level they ran into a man who was hurrying out of a doorway. Babar mowed him down with a short burst of his AK-47, the impact of the bullets pushing the man back into the room from which he had emerged.
Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife Rivka, who was seven months pregnant, were on the top floor when the men burst into their room. Nazir kept them covered, while Babar went to the other level to return in a few minutes shepherding a woman and two men ahead of him. The Holtzbergs’ son, a toddler, and his nanny, were also found.
Outside the building, a crowd had already begun to gather due to the explosion and the sound of gunfire. A few feet away, Harish Gohail and his brother Manush were sitting in their tailoring shop watching the goings-on. Manush walked out and stood in the street to get a better view, when a single shot rang out from the top floor of the Chabad House. Babar watched in satisfaction as Manush crumpled in the street, his blood slowly spreading in rivulets towards the gutter. The crowd disappeared instantly.
About a kilometre away, the Assistant Commissioner of Police, Issaq Bagwan, was desperately trying to find the location of Nariman House. Originally headed for leopold Cafe, when he had heard about the explosion near Nariman House, he had bolted over to that side. When he reached Colabawadi he met one of his informants, Salim, who told him that the commotion was centred in the Panch Pairi area, which was what the Nariman House vicinity was known as. On reaching there, Bagwan quickly sized up the nature and gravity of the situation.
A few minutes later a police van, with ASI Shinde and two constables with rifles, arrived. Bagwan enlisted the help of neighbouring residents, and in a short time evacuated more than three hundred people from the buildings immediately surrounding Chabad House. He also managed to cordon off the area.
Following this, he deployed Shinde and the constables atop the Prem Court building, and after the arrival of another police jeep positioned some staff on the roof of the lalji Terrace building. From these vantage points they started shooting at Babar and Nazir whenever they spotted them at the windows. The Nariman House was now effectively encircled and the siege had begun.
Excerpted with permission from The Scout, written by Shirish Thorat and Sachin Waze, Bloomsbury India, Rs399