In the spring of 1993 bomb blasts in 12 locations across Mumbai killed 257 people and injured more than a thousand. The perpetrators, members of the underworld in collaboration with Pakistani intelligence, were sheltering in Pakistan. As Mumbai reeled from the bloodshed, the leader of India’s external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), prepared to strike back. For years, the agency had been infiltrating trained agents into Pakistan to serve as long-term moles. The R&AW station chief, with his sophisticated network of agents, knew exactly where the militants were.
But when the order came from the prime minister, it simply said track and report. The strike never came.
Over the decades since the R&AW was formed in 1968 by the prime minister Indira
