CST was mere diversion

The police now believes that the mayhem at Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) on November 26 was just a diversionary tactic to allow terrorist teams holed up in the Taj Mahal Hotel, Nariman House and the Oberoi Trident Hotel to complete their plans and hold hundreds of people hostage.
According to senior officers involved with the investigations, the two terrorists went about creating mayhem at CST and then went on a shooting spree to ensure that the police would already be engaged with them when any alarm was sounded from either of the hotels about trouble brewing there.
“Their main targets were the two hotels as on any given day, several foreign nationals are lodged there. They wanted their attacks to be taken seriously even by western countries. They knew that the western world would definitely take the attack very seriously with several of their citizens taken hostage,” said a source.
The source further said that by opening fire at busy CST railway station in the evening, all top police officers would be engaged and in that time, their other teams could have enough time to enter the hotels.
This was seconded by some of the railway constables on duty at CST at the time who said that it didn’t seem like the terrorists had any particular purpose apart from creating panic and mayhem. Terrorists killed railway police inspector Shashank Shinde and Railway Protection Force head constable M.L. Chaudhary.
“It didn’t look like they were targetting anything in particular at CST or had any plans to get from A to B in the huge lobby of the station. In fact, they wanted to run towards the BEST bus depot outside and probably take the GPO road towards the Taj, but due to sustained fire from railway security forces, they changed their plan and went towards D.N. Road by using the foot over-bridge on the north end of the platform. It was from here that they went towards the Cama Hospital where a firefight killed ATS chief Hemant Karkare, additional commissioner Ashok Kamte and encounter specialist Vijay Salaskar.
Meanwhile, railway police commissioner A.K. Sharma only said, “I can neither deny or confirm this, as investigations are on.”