India’s security agencies frantically traded blame yesterday for failing to prevent last week’s attacks on Mumbai as the Government searched for more scapegoats to placate an outraged public.

Vilasrao Deshmukh, the Chief Minister of Maharashtra state, became the second official to resign over the attacks, after Shivraj Patil, who resigned as the federal Home Minister on Sunday.

Several other senior security officials are also in the line of fire amid a fierce debate over whether intelligence agencies warned the coastguard and Maharashtra police that a terrorist attack was imminent.

Officials from the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), India’s equivalent of MI6, say that they issued a series of warnings of a possible attack on Mumbai by sea in the past few months. The latest, issued on November 18, talked of an imminent assault on Mumbai by the “sea wing” of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the Pakistan-based militant group that Indian officials blame for last week’s strike.

The warning was issued after the RAW intercepted a call on a satellite telephone that was later found on a fishing boat hijacked by the gunmen who attacked Mumbai. The Intelligence Bureau, roughly the equivalent of MI5, also says that it issued alerts in late September giving warning that LeT was preparing to attack water-front targets in south Mumbai.

That information came from Fahim Ansari, a captured LeT operative who revealed under interrogation in March that he had carried out reconnaissance on the Taj and Oberoi hotels.

The head of Maharashtra’s leading fishermen’s union also says that he tipped off the Government four months ago about militants using sea routes to land explosives in Mumbai. “No one acted upon our information,” said Damodar Tandel, the president of the fishermen’s committee.

The coastguard admits receiving some alerts, as have the Taj and Oberoi. They and the Maharashtra police deny receiving specific warnings of the attack. Some security officials said that they received so many imprecise warnings that it was impossible to tell which ones to prioritise.

Times Recommends

• Rio Tinto four held as China prepares case
• Diplomats must keep heads down and trousers up
• When in Rome should one make like Berlusconi?