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The night in Brigadier Seethapathy's own words

Josy Joseph in Gandhinagar

It was 1810 IST on Tuesday when the director general of the elite National Security Guard summoned Brigadier Raj Seethapathy and tasked him to flush out terrorists holed up in Akshardham temple in Gandhinagar, Gujarat.

This was just over an hour after terrorists had entered the magnificent temple of the Swaminarayan sect. Reports were trickling in already of several devotees being killed in indiscriminate fire by the intruders. There was no time to lose.

Just hours later Brigadier Seethapathy landed in Gandhinagar in a special plane with a team of crack commandos.

Through the long night, the NSG commandos played a game of cat and mouse with the two terrorists. It wasn't the first time Brigadier Seethapathy and his comrades were at such a game.

Seethapathy had returned from Karnataka only a few days back after a futile search for forest brigand Veerappan. His team had to return because the Karnataka state police failed to provide them detailed intelligence for a surprise assault.

As the dawn broke over a tense Gujarat, Seethapathy's men had killed the boyish-looking terrorists and ended the siege of the temple.

Here is the long night in Brigadier Seethapthy's own words:

"At 1840 IST were ready and left for the Delhi airport. The heavy traffic slowed us down, and it was only at 7.40 pm that we managed to reach the technical area of the airport. At Ahmedabad, we were received by the state police officers and we rushed to the temple.

We started our work by collecting as much information as possible from state police officers and the swamis [temple priests] and other volunteers who had seen the terrorists. We got detailed briefings on a brilliant sand model of the temple from the swamis. And that made our work very easy. Then we got down to doing recce. The entire complex was well lit up, but there were several dark spots.

The state police had told us that there were two terrorists and one of them had been killed. I, with one of my chaps, walked across the lawn in the middle of the complex to inspect a body, which the state police said was of the terrorist killed. Our walking across also had another purpose. For sometime there was no firing and we had no clue where the terrorists were hiding.

As soon as we were near the body, the terrorists began firing from the right hand side of the main entrance to the central complex. The bullets missed us. The terrorists having notified us of their approximate location, the rest was easy to plan.

Among our aims was not to cause collateral damage to the beautiful complex and to avoid any further bloodshed. The body that we examined was actually of a state commando who was killed earlier. We did not realise it then.

The terrorists were well trained and they had over 130 rounds with them and they also used between 20 to 25 grenades. They had come prepared for a very long haul. In fact, it [the attack] was very similar to the December 13 Parliament attack. The two had dry fruits, dates, chocolates etc. I presume they wanted to take some people hostage and bargain with the authorities.

When you see one of your colleagues die, you feel very bad. But it happens in a war. And this is a war, such a long drawn war, no doubt. My boys are all veterans of various operations. Being from the army, they have seen action in Kashmir, in the northeast and elsewhere. Subedar Suresh, who laid down his life, too was an experienced fighter. He was killed during the final assault. He had taken cover behind a tree, which had two branches splitting away. A bullet scraped the split and killed him.

The final assault was over in a few minutes. Once we spotted them, they got into a bathroom on the rear of the right wing and locked themselves in. [From where we were] it is difficult to see that door of the bathroom. So we kept waiting, not allowing them to get away.

Around 0130 IST or so they came out and firing resumed. We had placed an NSG team on the rear. We were closing in on them from the front, while the rear team also kept up the pressure. The two jumped over a small fence but we kept engaging them.

Around 0300-0330 IST we were really close to them. We kept on firing sporadic shots so that they had no opportunity to get away. It was around this time that Suresh fell.

It was pitch dark in the rear part of the temple. So, it was very difficult. We wanted to wait for the daybreak. We kept them engaged. Around 0645 IST or so we went in for the kill.

From their [the terrorists'] appearance, they seemed to be from Kashmir. But we cannot say or sure."

The Temple Attack: Complete Coverage
The Swaminarayan sect

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