A Note from the Authors | Operation Trojan Horse

Operation Trojan Horse is a thriller inspired by real events – including the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack and several other LeT operations – and the true stories of the courageous men who risked their lives in the enemy country for their motherland. Here are excerpts from the authors’ notes:

In its campaign to bleed India with terror, the ISI began using the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) as its principal battering arm. The LeT was set up in 1987 by Hafiz Saeed and had the blessings of the Pakistani establishment in its terror campaigns against India from the very beginning. The LeT has conducted a spate of terror attacks in India, including the 26/11 Mumbai attacks that killed 166 people. Tackling the LeT’s game plan to seek to pulverize India with mindless suicide attacks and blasts from 1989 onwards has presented a stiff challenge to the Indian security and intelligence agencies. The task of thwarting terror is not an easy one. It’s a 24×7 mission. After its attempt to kill British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher failed in 1984, the terror group Irish Republican Army had said, ‘You have to be lucky all the time. We only have to be lucky once.’

Pakistan’s hostility is ingrained in its approach towards India and is part of its strategic template. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, Pakistani leader Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had vowed to ‘bleed India with a thousand cuts’. He had earlier also announced a ‘thousand-year war’ against India while addressing the United Nations Security Council in 1965. His dangerous, negative policy was continued by his wily and ruthless successor, General Zia ul Haq. From then on, sub-conventional warfare and the use of terrorism as a strategic tool to achieve its objectives against India became a norm in Pakistan.

During my long innings in the Indian Police Service (IPS), I had the opportunity of serving the country’s premier intelligence agency and getting involved in security and counter-terrorist operations. Terror has no nationality, colour, creed or religion; the human race is its victim.

Terror kills and maims the innocent and the unarmed who never expect to be its victims. I had one mission during my long service career: to do my best to save civilian lives from violent and life-threatening terror attacks. That mission drove me, inspired me.

Operation Trojan Horse is the story of a handful of counterterrorist operatives engaged in India’s fight against Pakistan-backed terror. I dedicate the book to the brave, faceless and nameless Indian intelligence operatives who are engaged in battling terror. They cannot be identified due to national security and attendant constraints despite their priceless sacrifices for the country.

– D.P. Sinha

During my two-decade career as a crime reporter, I have seen – and felt – the ruinous impact of terror attacks. I cannot erase from my memory the sight of mangled body parts lying among charred metal pieces at blast sites. When I learn about a terror attack in any part of the world, the voice of a young mother, whom I met eighteen years ago, still reverberates in my ears. I can hear the desperation and the helplessness in her words. She had lost her husband, a cab driver, in the twin blasts that rocked Mumbai in 2003. But she could not afford the luxury to grieve as she had to make sure her young school-going children survived the trauma of losing their loving father. Her husband had had dreams of making them doctors or lawyers, and paying their school fees demanded her immediate attention.

Operation Trojan Horse is the story of India’s fight against Pakistan-sponsored terror in the country. The Indian response is proactive and precise. The book is a work of fiction inspired by instances of supreme courage and sacrifice exhibited by a few young men who became part of secret projects like ‘Operation Trojan Horse’, choosing national service over lucrative careers to blunt terror. These men must remain nameless in the face of their invaluable sacrifice. The ‘Trojan Horse’ was a hollow wooden horse crafted by the Greeks to conceal themselves in and deceptively enter the city of Troy during the Trojan War.

– Abhishek Sharan