The day fedayeen militants from Pakistan attacked India’s Parliament House, I was in my office at the CBI headquarters in New Delhi. Television crews covering the Parliament beat captured parts of the attack—the most daring yet in Indian history—live. Little had the broadcasters reckoned that instead of interviewing political personalities that morning they would have to report on a 9/11-type attack, which had incidentally taken place only three months before in New York.

Many of the cameramen themselves were scurrying for cover as gunshots rang in the air and bullets burst out of automatic weapons from all directions, killing several policemen, a lady police constable, two Watch and Ward staffers and a gardener. The fedayeen militants were dangerously brainwashed members of the same freelance jihadi groups that were looking for an opportunity to strike at important symbols of governance and finance all over the world, united in their heavily misplaced belief that high- profile killings were the only way to find a permanent solution to their never-ending grievances. Alas, they are yet to realize that terror never wins. The footprints of these diabolical men, seized with a burning desire to blow themselves up and exchange their lives for those of hundreds and thousands of innocents, can now be traced to all major terror attacks across the world including, as I write, in Sri Lanka. New Delhi on 13 December 2001 was no exception.

Delhi’s winter may not have turned bitterly cold yet, but the nip and bite in the air was quite sharp. However, the wintry air had little to do with the chills that ran up and down my spine as I stared, shell-shocked, at the news channels, the gesture resonant of my actions after 9/11, when I had watched the aerial attack on New York’s twin towers unfold live. Never in my worst nightmares had I thought that the Indian Parliament would one day be attacked, and that too by armed men in battle fatigues from another country.

To be continued.....