Rumours on the Street on Why terror struck

With about 55,000 cabs plying everyday in Mumbai, the taxi drivers transport thousands of people everyday. Often, they interact with the passengers on everything from politics to personal life or end up overhearing the conversations amongst passengers themselves. Logical conclusion that they probably know what is going on in people’s minds and what the general sentiment is like.
So Nirmal and I went about, chatting up with several cab drivers just to get a sense of what they have been hearing from the janta regarding the recent terror attack.
Cabbie Ismail Abdul Kader Naik, who transported some 300 people since the terror attack started on Wednesday night, said, “Majority of the passengers believed that the entire operation was carried out to lure the anti terrorist squad (ATS) top brass out in the open and shoot them.”
We were amazed to hear this initially. But more cabbies from different locations and origins echoed this feedback.
“Passengers are telling us that they believe the main target was ATS and security forces. They surely think help came from overseas but the mastermind could have been the opposition party stemming from there unhappiness with Malegaon blasts investigation,” said a 60 year old cab driver.
Reason for why security officials target differ though. Another driver, Ashok Kumar Mishra said that security and intelligence organization have been very tough on underworld and terrorists and so this was their shot at getting back at the former. Taking hostages at Taj and Oberoi was just a ploy while the main idea was to get the top brass out in the open.
Interesting it is to see how these thoughts can catch on. Also very obvious from our interactions was the fact that passengers as well as the cab drivers are very angry with the politicians and local police.
During our interactions, we also found out that many drivers who were not from Mumbai had fled back to their respective villages as terror hit the streets of Mumbai. Just like they had done when anti-north Indian protests had haunted them a couple of months back.
While the world talks about Mumbai becoming a target for global terror, our very own cabbies have a different story to tell of what Mumbai thinks.
(Meant to be printed in DNA newspaper. So i guess they have a cpoyright thingy over this)