Four Corners: Terror in Mumbai

This Monday night Four Corners looks at the terrorism that gripped the city of Mumbai last year.

11 people died at the Leopold Cafe last November. The event even impacted on an Australian film crew, including actress Brooke Satchwell.

This documentary follows the steps of the terrorists using telephone calls made between the raid’s masterminds in Pakistan and the gunmen in Mumbai. Those calls combine with the testimony of the captured terrorist Ajmal Kasab, to create an extra-ordinary chronology of the attacks. The calls reveal how the men are continually reminded they must kill as many people as possible.

Ajmal Kasab, speaking from his hospital bed tells how he and another man attacked the city’s train station slaughtering more than 50 people. The program then hears from the train station survivors who tell how the gunmen coldly cut down innocent people one after another. A young boy describes how six of his family are killed around him. The security forces admit they were overwhelmed and underprepared. Some hid rather than be killed. Others tried to use weapons that would not work and were slaughtered.

As the film progresses the relationship between the attackers and their controllers at the other end of the phone comes into clearer focus. At times the young men appear utterly ruthless, at other times they break away from their conditioning and register their wonder at the hotel they have taken over. They talk of computers and expensive furniture as if in a wonderland.

The terrorists are told to kill as many people as they can in the Taj Hotel, and then to start a fire. The purpose? To let the world know a symbol of India and the decadent west is being destroyed.

As the phone calls continue it becomes clear the young men are not always willing to kill on command. In one chilling episode one gunman is told to kill a hostage. He stalls for time. Then an hour later he is ordered to shoot. A gunshot is heard.

The calls do not just document the slaughter of innocent people. As Indian commandos close in on the gunmen inside a Jewish school the phone taps record the last moments of the siege and the gunfight between the opposing sides. One gunman says how he is hit, in the leg and the arm. “Do not be taken alive” he is told.

When Lashkar- e-Taiba decided to attack the city of Mumbai they wanted to carry out an attack that would horrify the world. This is the story of that attack from the inside.

This airs 8.30 pm Monday on ABC1 and is repeated on 4th August at 11.35 pm