Mumbai: On 26/11, the Mumbai Police were fighting two battles - one with 10 terrorists who came from the sea and the other with their own systemic and infrastructural failures.
Constable after constable has reported how their .303 rifles jammed, how their bullets misfired and how many of them could simply not hit the target.
Images of a Railway Police Force (RPF) constable struggling to shoot at Ajmal Amir Kasab and Abu Ismail Khan from his jammed carbine at the Chhattrapati Shivaji Terminus station are some of the most enduring ones of the attack.
During the attack not just one but at least three more RPF personnel ran for cover, unable to fire back because their guns jammed when it mattered most.
The 10 terrorists were armed with AK-47s and hand grenades and the Mumbai Police fought pitched battles with their archaic World War II era .303 rifles.
Several guns, which had not been used for years, jammed and the terrorists just walked away.
Constable Harshad Patil told the special court hearing the Mumbai attacks case: "I tried to fire at the attackers armed with AK 47 rifles, but very first bullet misfired from my .303 rifle rendering the weapon useless. The bullet was very old and defective which caused jamming of the gun on firing of the very first round."
Police Commando Gitanjali Gaurav admitted that though she was trained to handle sophisticated weapons, but on November 26 she had no weapons on her.
As observed by the Ram Pradhan Committee, out of the total 270 AK-47s available in the city at that time, hardly 20 were used during the operations.
According to internal orders of the Mumbai Police, officers are required to attend firing practice once a year but sources say even that was not being followed.
As a result, most of the policemen on the streets that night were woefully out of firing practice.
Gitanajali Gaurav told the court that 50 police were deployed at Chhattrapati Shivaji Terminus as regular security cover. Many had opened fire from their .303s but Kasab and Ismail could not be stopped.
Constable Ambadas Pawar admitted in court that all bullets fired at Kasab and Ismail missed the terrorist pair.
Multiple authorities were relaying messages, compounding the chaos on the ground.
Pradhan Committee report says the Anti-Terrorism Squad was taking orders from both the Mumbai City Control Room and the State Control Room, leading to confusion.
Taking a lesson from the 7/11 train bombings in 2006, Mumbai Police had said in its Standard Operating Procedure that a unified command-and-control centre should be set up in such crises. But during 26/11, the plan remained on paper.
The 60 commandos of the Quick Response Team (QRT) of the Anti-Terrorism Squad in Mumbai, which is considered almost as well-trained as the NSG, was poorly utilised.
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