How Mumbai police lost the plot on suburban rail blasts

The Mumbai suburban railway bombing, also known as the 7/11 blasts, took place on July 11, 2006. Unfortunately, it took place when we lacked an integrated approach to our intelligence coordination and terror crime investigation.

- Vappala Balachandran

The then Mumbai police commissioner told a security advisory group constituted by the Maharashtra government — of which I was a member — that he had never been given any indication in his meetings with the Intelligence Bureau at the highest level before the attack that the Mumbai suburban railway system was a target. In fact, it seemed that the central intelligence indicated that religious places would be targeted.

The 7/11 attacks killed 189 passengers in different trains on the Western Railway in six minutes, compared to 26/11 attacks where the death toll during the 58-hour standoff stood at 175. An American media report on July 21, 2006, said that the New York Police Department (NYPD) had sent an officer to Mumbai to study the “simplicity and lethality” of 7/11 attacks, which “were the equivalent of bombing seven commuter stations between Manhattan and Westchester”.

NYPD wanted to understand how the Mumbai suburban attacks were executed with such precision. Post the Twin Tower attacks on September 11, 2001 (9/11), the March 11, 2004, attacks on the commuter railway system in Madrid, and the July 7 London tube bombings, the NYPD had augmented its security network. Therefore, the Mumbai bombings were of interest to it to see what gaps remained. The 7/11 attackers had carried bombs in backpacks common locally, hid these in overhead racks near the exits to enable them to exit the train quickly, and had used timing devices to cause the explosions within 11 minutes to cause the maximum panic, shock, and damage.