CCTV Footage of the Mumbai Bombings, "Truth Serum" for the "Baby Faced" Terrorist, and Eyewitness Accounts

Not a lot to see here from the CCTV footage, but what appears to be an inconclusive shoot-out and a number Mumbaikars looking appropriately confused, frightened, and running for their lives. Nonetheless, it gives you an inkling of how some experienced it.



Further the Times Online reports that the police intend to use a "truth serum" on the so-called "baby-faced" terrorist.

Police interrogators in Mumbai told The Times that they are poised to settle the matter of Kasab's nationality through the use of "narcoanalysis" – a controversial technique, banned in most democracies, where the subject is injected with a truth serum.

The method was widely used by Western intelligence agencies during the Cold War, before it emerged that the drugs used – typically the barbiturate sodium pentothal – may induce hallucinations, delusions and psychotic manifestations.

Mumbai police said that their evidence of a Pakistan link includes hand grenades manufactured in the city of Rawalpindi, in Pakistan, and satellite phone calls traced back to the country.

Deven Bharti, a deputy police commissioner in Mumbai and one of the interrogators, told The Times that Kasab had shown no remorse for his part in a terror attack that had killed nearly 200 people.

"He is a 24-year-old boy with the eyes of a killer," Mr Bharti said.

"Nobody should doubt: he is a highly-trained murderer. He has told us he came to Mumbai from Pakistan to cause maximum casualties."

For a more descriptive and immediate reaction to the bombings, here are a few eyewitness accounts.

Eyewitness Account 1



Eyewitness Account 2



Based upon my reading of this attack, the nutshell calculus seems to be to increase tensions between India and Pakistan, and thus, draw away some of Pakistan and the US's joint ability to deal with the Taliban and Al Qaeda in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) on the Afghan border.

At this point, its clear that the attack was planned and executed from Pakistan, by Pakistanis, and almost certainly with some element of state support. However, with such a disaggregated state as Pakistan, to call it a Pakistani affair is a gross generalization. Even so, while it was certainly not directly perpetrated by the Pakistani state apparatus, it seems likely that it grew from the actions of factions that at least indirectly have some state affiliation or funding.

Whether or not India, Pakistan, and the United States are capable of coordinating to deal with this problem is the next question.