Mumbai, The Aftermath

Not only did the terrorists who attacked Mumbai targeting foreigners – especially American, British and Israeli citizens – kill many people. No, they also appear to have done much more. As in binding their captives and torturing them before finally killing them.

Asked what was different about the victims of the incident, another doctor said: “It was very strange. I have seen so many dead bodies in my life, and was yet traumatised. A bomb blast victim’s body might have been torn apart and could be a very disturbing sight. But the bodies of the victims in this attack bore such signs about the kind of violence of urban warfare that I am still unable to put my thoughts to words,” he said.

Asked specifically if he was talking of torture marks, he said: “It was apparent that most of the dead were tortured. What shocked me were the telltale signs showing clearly how the hostages were executed in cold blood,” one doctor said.

The other doctor, who had also conducted the post-mortem of the victims, said: “Of all the bodies, the Israeli victims bore the maximum torture marks. It was clear that they were killed on the 26th itself. It was obvious that they were tied up and tortured before they were killed. It was so bad that I do not want to go over the details even in my head again,” he said.

Obviously, if this report is correct, Indian security forces may have engaged in more than a little payback when they saw what had been done to the victims.

The doctors who conducted the post mortem said the bodies of the terrorists were beyond recognition. “Their faces were beyond recognition.”

There was no way of identifying them,” he said. Asked how, if this is the case, they knew the bodies were indeed those of the terrorists, he said: “The security forces that brought the bodies told us that those were the bodies of the terrorists,” he said, adding there was no other way they could have identified the bodies.

One terrorist was reportedly shot in both eyes. This may not have been an intentional act, of course. If the terrorists simply died in a hail of gunfire, it could all just be random.

Or not.

Regardless, this adds a whole new level of barbarity to an already barbaric act on the part of the terrorists. The attackers were stopped well short of their goal of killing thousands. But a horrible price appears to have been paid by many of their victims. Peaceful Americans as well as citizens of other countries and not a few Indians died in this terror attack, people who did these attackers no harm and meant them none. Yet here we are.

It is going to be a long war.