Cover Story OTHER STORIES RELATED TO COVER Shootout At The House First Person: Prabhu Chawla Parliament security: Price Of Openness

The world may consider it the unluckiest set of digits in the world but R.K. Anand doesn't think so. Every time the lawyer-parliamentarian acquires a car, he orders special licence plates with the number "13" on them. It may seem like mocking convention, but Anand believes he has very good reasons. Heading for Parliament, Anand, a Rajya Sabha member, got ready to alight from his car (DVY13) at the porch just outside the main entrance. He had barely opened the door when the world around him exploded in a loud blast, the staccato of gunfire and a wall of smoke. His vision blurred, Anand ordered his driver to get away. Forty minutes later, there was blood on the ground and dread in the air.

SHOOT TO KILL: Security personnel swing into action (top); the human bomb among the attackers exploded in front of the House

On December 13, death had looked Anand-and virtually the entire political class of India-in the face and then looked away. A suicide squad of five terrorists with grenades in backpacks, Kalashnikovs strapped across their chests and murder on their mind stunned a nation. Contrary to democratic ideal, the Houses of Parliament do not symbolise the aspirations of the masses but the clout of a chosen few. The attack was a message to them that in an environment of high political stakes and heightened anxiety, no one was safe.

The attack on Parliament was reality television at its horrific best, September 11 and the World Trade Center translated into Indian idiom. When a shaky calm returned to Parliament so did the realisation that the country had been lucky. All five militants lay dead, along with six security personnel and a gardener. Eighteen others, including 12 security staff and a TV cameraman, were injured. It could have been much, much worse.

SEE AND SEIZE: A bag belonging to the attackers is put into a bomb disposal bin

In the three rings of security that encircle Parliament, the first-entry and access-went down with alarming rapidity (see box), but it was the speed of reaction of the next two that prevented total carnage from taking place in the corridors of power. Had even one of the five armed terrorists, suspected to be hardcore Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) men (see accompanying story), gained entry into the main Parliament building the casualties could have been enormous. The consequences are too frightening to contemplate. At one stage, the terrorists were less than a metre away from the three steps that lead into the office of the Rajya Sabha Chairman, Vice-President Krishan Kant. The simple, swift action of slamming doors prevented a violent sequence of events spiralling out of control.

TROOPING IN: The army was brought in to flush out the attackers (above); securitymen remove the body of one of the terrorists

It all began with that ubiquitous beetle-like symbols of politics, a white Ambassador driving towards the main Parliament building from the Parliament Street entrance, its red light flashing. The Parliament sticker on the Ambassador (DL3CJ 1527) was later found to have anti-Vajpayee and Advani abuse scribbled on it. The car was waved through the gate and went straight across the main gate towards the Vijay Chowk end (see graphic). The militants then swung the car sharply to the right at the bend in front of gate 12, but found their way blocked near gate 11 by a clutch of cars belonging to the vice-president's cavalcade.

As the driver of the rogue car tried to slow down, he hit one of the vehicle and came to a screeching halt near the Rajya Sabha lawns. By then, its shrill, erratic path had alerted the vice-president's securitymen. Parliament House security officer J.P. Yadav raised an alarm over his walkie-talkie and when the first response from the men in the car came-with bullets not words-Yadav is killed at point-blank range.

PRAHLAD PATEL, Lok Sabha member EYE WITNESS "I found a member of the W&W staff still left outside. I dragged her inside. As we were closing the door, a bullet came through."

CRPF constable Kamlesh Kumari had tried waving the car to a halt but was cut down by the bullets. Gardener Desh Raj, tending the Rajya Sabha lawns on a crisp winter morning, fell where he worked.

Four terrorists then scaled a wall beyond gate 11, taking cover from the general melee and took off civilian clothes under which they were wearing olive-green fatigues. Along with assault rifles, each man carried at least a dozen grenades in his backpack. They sprinted towards gate 5, from where the prime minister enters, where securitymen were readying for Vajpayee's arrival. Yadav's alert on the wireless electrified the watch and ward staff who immediately shut all the doors into Parliament. The terrorists' chances of "success" were whittling away: having scaled the wall and running in the open they came under fire from the CRPF men along the perimeter wall and the columns on the first floor verandah of Parliament. Three of the four militants died near gates 8 and 9, the fourth militant tried to climb to the first floor using a Doordarshan cable. He was shot, fell off the cable but still tried to hobble towards gate 5, hurling grenades before a volley of bullets killed him.

The fifth militant had raced towards gate 1 in an attempt to cause damage near the main entrance. He was spraying bullets and lobbing grenades shouting "Pakistan paindabad" (Pakistan zindabad). He reached the main entrance and blew himself up on the main stairs. When it was all over, the statue of Mahatma Gandhi, behind which the camera crews had taken desperate shelter, overlooked a surreal scene: a broken body lay on the steps of the main entrance to Parliament, bits of flesh and stains of blood dotted the portico and every one walking in a slow daze back to some semblance of recovery in a haze of smoke.