Ballot: Panacea for every peril democracy faces

On Thursday, a special plane landed in the technical area of the Indira Gandhi International Airport at Palam in New Delhi.

- Shashi Shekhar

On Thursday, a special plane landed in the technical area of the Indira Gandhi International Airport at Palam in New Delhi. It was quite special, as its passengers included elite commandos, officers of the Indian intelligence apparatus, and a "most-wanted" criminal—Tahawwur Hussain Rana, the man who had played a pivotal role in planning and orchestrating the Mumbai terror attack of November 26, 2008.

Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), which uses terror as a force multiplier, and its protégé, the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) had assigned the job to Rana. This was why he visited India on November 20 and 21, 2008, days before the attack. He finalized routes and targets of the attack during the visit, aided by his accomplice David Coleman Headley.

This terror attack, the biggest on Indian soil, claimed the lives of 15 police personnel, two NSG commandos, and 157 civilians. It left at least another 300 people injured. Ten Pakistan-trained terrorists kept Mumbai under siege for 72 hours. The mayhem they unleashed sent shock waves through the financial capital of India, and riled every Indian at home and abroad. The lives of Indians, besides citizens from 24 other nations, were in peril.