On 24 September 2002, multiple terrorists attacked the Swaminarayam Akshardham Temple in Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India, killing 33 and injuring more than 80. India's National Security Guard intervened and ended the siege the next day, killing the terrorists. Six people were later arrested by Gujarat Police but acquitted in 2014 by the Supreme Court.
In response to the attack, Pramukh Swami Maharaj, along with government officials, appealed to maintain peace. The complex re-opened on 7 October 2002, 14 days following the attack.
Sequence of events
Initial approach
At approximately 4:45 pm on 24 September 2002, a white Ambassador car dropped off two terrorists, Murtaza Hafiz Yasin and Ashraf Ali Mohammad Farooq, between the ages of 20 and 25 carrying haversacks and jackets filled with automatic weapons and grenades at Gate 3 of the Swaminarayan Akshardham complex. When the two attempted to enter the complex, the volunteers stopped the armed terrorists for a security screening. The terrorists jumped over the 7-foot-high fence, bypassing security screening, and started firing their guns as they began their rampage through the complex.
Main temple infiltration attempt
The perpetrators rushed towards the central walkway of the complex while firing shots at visitors and pilgrims browsing a nearby bookstall and proceeded to the main temple while throwing hand grenades. As the Akshardham staff, including the temple supervisor, Khodsinh Jadhav, witnessed the killings, they rushed across the 200-foot walkway and shut the 15-foot doors of the main temple. As a result, the terrorists were unable to infiltrate the main temple where 35 people were offering prayers.
At 4:48 pm, three minutes after the attack began, Vishwavihari Swami, in the Akshardham temple complex, made an SOS call to Chief Minister Narendra Modi's office and informed them about the attack. Within minutes, Gandhinagar's district police chief R. B. Brahmbhatt was dispatched to the scene and the State Commando force was also instructed to arrive at the temple complex. Meanwhile, outside the complex, local individuals mobilized into volunteers.
Shifting targets
Thereafter, the terrorists, unable to infiltrate the main monument, moved towards the exhibition halls. Although the volunteers had locked all the doors of the exhibition halls, the terrorists entered Exhibition Hall 1, which contained the multimedia show, by prying open the exit door. Upon entering the hall, they fired shots at the audience, killing and wounding men, women and children. By 5:15 pm, Chief Minister of Gujarat Narendra Modi called the Deputy Prime Minister L. K. Advani in Delhi and asked for the National Security Guards (NSG), commonly referred to as Black Cat Commandos. The terrorists left Exhibition Hall 1 as they had entered and climbed onto and hid in the parikrama, the outer perimeter of the temple.
Pursuit and killing of the terrorists
Within 10–15 minutes of the attack, police security guards and commandos had reached the premises. The police and commandos escorted the visitors from around the complex to safety, while volunteers helped transport the injured victims to nearby hospitals. The police and commandos searched for the two terrorists, who were focused on retreating to an alternative hiding spot. During this temporary halt, the police and commandos also guided the remaining 100 visitors in Exhibition Hall 1 to a safe location outside of the complex. At 7:30 pm, as the security guards guided 30 visitors from inside the main monument to safety, the terrorists, who had climbed atop the parikrama, opened fire at the commandos. During this attack, no one was hurt. Since the commandos had surrounded the area and continued the crossfire, the terrorists found it difficult to escape.
At 10:10 pm, two buses of NSG commandos and one bus filled with NSG equipment arrived at Akshardham. By approximately 11:30 pm, after reviewing multiple strategies, 35 Black Cat commandos positioned themselves throughout the complex in an effort to find the terrorists.
The search for the terrorists continued throughout the night. Around midnight, the terrorists jumped down from the parikrama and entered a nearby bathroom. Although the NSGs had planned to pass the night until daybreak before attempting to locate the terrorists, the guards fired in order to draw fire from the terrorists and use up their ammunition. The officers situated themselves around the complex, with the NSGs first in line, followed by men from the Rapid Action Force, the Border Security Force, the State Reserve Police, and the Anti-Terrorist Squad. As the night progressed, the terrorists moved into another area, a grove of trees near Exhibition Hall 3. By daybreak firing continued. At approximately 6:45 am, the 14-hour-long ordeal ended with the Black Cat Commandos shooting the two terrorists, who had hidden in the bushes.
By the end of the attack, at least 30 persons were killed, excluding the attackers, and more than 80 were wounded, including at least 23 police officers. Apart from the 27 people killed in the first assault, two state police officers and one commando lost their lives in the action. One more seriously injured commando, Surjan Singh Bhandari, was hit in the head with a bullet and died nearly two years later in a coma. NSG Commando Suresh Chand Yadav was awarded the highest peacetime military decoration Ashok Chakra (posthumously) for his courage and gallantry during the operation.
Government reaction
On 25 September 2002, then-Prime Minister of India Atal Bihari Vajpayee said that the attack on the Swaminarayan Akshardham complex was a well-thought out conspiracy and that the central government would launch a thorough investigation to get to the bottom of it.
Aftermath
The head of Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS) at the time, Pramukh Swami Maharaj, appealed to maintain peace. The Gujarat government took the stance to do so within the region and resolved to promote solidarity. Appeals for peace were also made by Prime Minister of India Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the Deputy Prime Minister L. K. Advani, Governor of Gujarat Sunder Singh Bhandari and Chief Minister of Gujarat Narendra Modi.
BAPS also organized a condolence meeting after the attack. The prayer assembly commenced with devotional prayers sung by swamis for the peace of the departed souls, grieving relatives and sympathisers. Then the entire gathering observed a two-minute silent prayer for the deceased and injured and for harmony. BAPS Swaminarayan Sanstha donated:
- ₹300,000 for the family of the deceased NSG Commando Suresh Chand Yadav
- ₹200,000 each for the families of deceased State Commandos Shri Arjun Singh Gameti and Shri Allah Rakha Unadjam
- ₹200,000 for the injured NSG Commando Surjan Singh
- ₹100,000 for the 29 families of the pilgrims who died
- ₹25,000 each to the soldiers who were injured
- Compensation for the injured pilgrims
The Akshardham attack and the response to it became a case study for NSG Brigadier Raj Seetapathy, the NSG commando in charge of the rescue mission called "Operation Thunderbolt" or "Operation Vajra Shakti," asserted that the response to Akshardham terror attack had become a benchmark of clockwork achievement. He presented this case study, Akshardham Response: How to challenge an attack with calm and peace, at various centres, including the Sardar Patel Police Academy in Hyderabad and various Army training sessions. He commented: "What Pramukh Swami Maharaj did was unbelievable. He pieced society back together. The tragedy instilled a sense of confidence that Gujarat need not burn at every spark that is ignited. What I observed after the operation was the calm and serenity that was quickly restored. I have faced many violent encounters in my professional life but Akshardham response was a great learning both from operational and philosophical point of views.” He went on to say that once the spiritual head decided to purify the souls of the two terrorists, the volunteers and devotees had immediately fallen silent without slogan-shouting or expression of anger for any community, a most magnanimous and exemplary act of restraint and responsibility that foiled the terrorists' plans to incite more violence.
Reopening
On 7 October 2002, two weeks after the attack, the Akshardham complex was reopened to the public. As advised by government officials, increased security measures were taken to ensure the safety of the volunteers and visitors, including stationing the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) of Gujarat at the complex, increasing the height of the boundary wall, installing CCTV's around the campus and requiring visitors to pass through a metal detector.
Investigation
Summary
The intense investigation began soon after terrorists attacked Akshardham on 24 September 2002. A short summary of the Akshardham Attack Case Verdict is provided below:
In July 2006, the POTA court awarded death sentence to Adam Ajmeri, Shan Miya (alias Chand Khan), and Mufti Abdul Qyyum Mansuri. While Mohammed Salim Shaikh was sentenced to life imprisonment, Abdulmiyan Qadri got a 10-year term and Altaf Hussain five years. In 2008, some of the convicts appealed to the Gujarat High Court. On 30 May 2010, the Court confirmed the death sentence awarded to three persons and prison terms to three. In May 2014, a Supreme Court bench, composed of Justices A K Patnaik and Venkate Gopala Gowda, acquitted all six persons, including those who had been sentenced to death. The Court slammed the Gujarat Police for the incompetence with which it had investigated the case and ruled that "...[W]e are convinced that accused persons are innocent with respect to the charges leveled against them."
First phase of the investigation: Deadlock
Shortly after the end of the 14-hour ordeal at the Temple Complex, the police began their investigation. According to Brigadier Seetapathy, the gunmen carried letters in Urdu that affirmed their connection with an organization called Tehrik-E-Kasas, or Movement for Revenge, a group previously unknown to law enforcement officials. The letters suggested that the gunmen carried out the attack "because they could not tolerate what happened to children, women and Muslims during the Gujarat riots." The letters were translated for the NSG by Maulana Dawood Kausar Ashrafi of the Jama Masjid of Gandhinagar. Upon reading these letters, the officials believed that Tehrik-e-Kasas was formed specifically to avenge the Gujarat riots.
On 27 September 2002, Gujarat Police Chief K. Chakravarty interrogated the driver, Raju Thakur, and car owner, Mansukh Acharya, who had provided the white Ambassador with plate number GJ-1-U-2234 for the attack. Raju Thakur explained that he transported the terrorists from Kalupur to Askhardham for Rs. 120. Initial reports suggested that the terrorists arrived at the Kalupur railway station between 2:00 pm and 3:00 pm IST. During this interrogation, Raju Thakur and Mansukh Acharya informed the Gujarat police that they would be able to identify the militants from photos. The identity of the two terrorists was also established on 27 September. The investigators claimed that the two terrorists, Mohammad Amjad and Hafiz Yaseen, were connected with terrorist groups Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed. A periodical published in Pakistan that included pictures of the two men in the obituary columns was a major lead in establishing the identity of the terrorists.
Initially, the local crime branch was investigating the case; but after much deliberation, the case was transferred to the Anti-Terrorist Squad. Consequently, approximately two weeks after the attack, the Forensic Science Laboratory received a set of articles collected from the temple premises and bodies. The FSL planned to analyze these materials to trace the origins of the conspiracy. In addition to the terrorists' belongings, the FSL also received samples of grenade splinters and cartridges to ascertain their origin. Although investigation agencies had suggested that the terrorists were foreigners, the evidence collected thus far suggested otherwise because the terrorists' undergarments, clothes and dry fruits had all been purchased locally from the Kalupur area.