Read our special report: 'Terror in Mumbai'

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Lying on a Mumbai hospital bed, his arms pockmarked with intravenous needles, Commando Sunil Kumar Yadav softly recounted his harrowing tale of close-range urban warfare inside the Taj Hotel, where Yadav and his fellow National Security Guardsmen finally managed to end a 60-hour siege by armed militants on Saturday.  

In the aftermath of Mumbai’s worst terrorist attacks, which killed at least 172 people, lines are being drawn between the “heroes” who acted to save lives and the “losers” who failed to act on the available intelligence to thwart one of the world’s most brazen acts of terror.

Indian Home Minister Shivraj Patil submitted his resignation Sunday, taking “moral responsibility” for the attacks as the Indian government faces growing pressure to explain why it failed to prevent the attacks. 

Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram was appointed to take over Patil's job and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh - a respected economist and former finance minister - is temporarily handling the finance portfolio, according to a government spokesman. 

National Security Advisor M.K. Narayanan had also submitted his resignation, according to Indian media reports.

The resignations came amid reports that Indian intelligence agencies had circulated a “top secret” information brief last week about a planned attack from the sea. According to The Sunday Express, a national weekly, preliminary investigations show that the attackers were in Indian territorial waters nearly 72 hours before launching their attacks. Indian security officials say the attackers shipped their firearms into the city on high-powered rubber dinghies, some of which have been recovered by the police.

Door-to-door combat down labyrinthine corridors

 
But the failures at the top did little to prevent the heroism on the field once the attacks began.

In an interview with FRANCE 24 from his hospital bed, where he is recovering from bullet wounds in his thighs, Yadav talked about the difficulty of flushing out militants in a hotel packed with panicked guests. “We were given no information about how many people were involved in the attack, what sort of weapons they had or even the hotel’s floor-plans,” he said.

 
In the absence of concrete information, NSG commandos had to rely on the hotel staff to direct them through the labyrinthine corridors of the 105-year-old landmark building comprised of an old and a new wing, which are only connected on certain floors. When the commandos finally got a hold of the hotel’s floor-plan, some of these passages weren’t listed, slowing down their operations.

 
“We asked the management where the guests were so we could get them out first,” said Yadav. “They said there were guests everywhere in the hotel. The place had so many doors, we never knew if we would meet hostages or terrorists behind the doors.”

 
It was in the course of this painstaking yet high pressure door-to-door operation that Yadav encountered a young militant who indiscriminately opened fire when he caught sight of the elite all-black clad troops on the third floor.

 
Three bullets from the semiautomatic rifle punctured the back of Yadav’s thighs. His body armour prevented further injury and doctors have described Yadav’s condition as stable.

Grief over service deaths, anger over politicians

It was only on Saturday, after three days of combat, that the last militant was killed inside the Taj and the building was finally secured.

 
The 172 people killed in the attack include 20 security service personnel. Among the most high profile are the deaths of three of the city’s top cops, who were gunned down hours after the attacks broke out.

As life in India’s commercial capital hobbled back to normal, its famously hardwired residents have been turning up in the thousands to attend funeral services and last-rites for the security officers killed during the attacks. 

On Saturday, thousands of Mumbaikars joined the funeral procession of Anti-Terror Squad (ATS) chief Hemant Karkare in a massive outpouring of grief. 

A day later, grief over the slain police chief had turned to anger as political parties facing state elections this week and a general election next year erected enormous billboards across the city lamenting the loss of Karkare and his two top police comrades.

Karkare was under political pressure from the country’s rightwing Hindu parties over his investigation of a suspected Hindu terrorist cell implicated in the 2006 blasts in Malegaon, a small town near Mumbai.

‘This is for all the political parties’

On the sidewalk outside the Taj a day after Karkare’s funeral, Yuvraj Korpe, a young lawyer, held a sign that read, “This is for all the political parties,” before going on to add, “how many more martyrs like Hemant Karkare do you want?” 

Korpe, who attended Karkare’s funeral, said he was incensed when Narendra Modi, a controversial hardline Hindu politician who was barred from entering the US on grounds of incitement of religious hatred, visited the city. Modi’s opposition BJP party has criticised the ruling Congress Party’s handling of the recent attacks. 

“How dare he,” fumed Korpe. “How dare he come to our city.”   

In his hospital room though, Yadav refused to be led into a discussion about the political handling of the situation. “I just get my orders, I just serve my country,” he said. “Of course this was a terrible mission. But with every mission, you learn. Now, I’ve learned about fighting inside a hotel with many closed doors.”