Bombay Blasts - IV

I strongly recommend this piece in IBNLIVE. I see a lot of valid points in this.

AK 47 versus a revolver: it's no match. While the terrorists who held Mumbai hostage were said to be equipped with the latest automatic weapons and ammo, the Mumbai police battling them did not even have as much as a helmet. NSG commandos had to be flown in from Delhi. M N Singh said civil police was no answer to terrorism. "This is the first time there's been a face-to-face combat between police and terrorists. For that, the police are not equipped," he said, adding the state should have a commando force to itself to plug the time lag.

Deora concluded the debate by saying that the root of terrorism was ill-sentiments against each others' community. "We must ask ourselves before we go to a community - do we harbour band sentiments against a community? Are we biased?" he asked.

Here is another wonderful piece from the NY Times.

A parliamentary investigative panel found serious gaps in the Indian Navy and Coast Guard’s ability to monitor sea routes because of a lack of long-range surveillance equipment, including aircraft, according to The Indian Express.

Ill-paid city police are often armed with little more than batons. Even the elite commandos heading the charge against the gunmen this week were slowed by old, bulky bulletproof jackets and had no technology at their disposal to determine where the firepower was coming from inside the sprawling hotels.

Sharpshooters had neither protective gear, nor the high-powered telescopes that their counterparts in Western countries would most likely use in a standoff with terrorists. On Saturday afternoon, a sharpshooter who had spent over 60 hours perched outside the Taj Hotel said neither he nor his partner had fired a shot because they were not sure how to distinguish the gunmen from ordinary civilians trapped inside the hotel.