Mumbai Attacker's Photo Haunts Commentator
The attacks on five-star hotels in Mumbai, India's commercial capital, have commentator Sandip Roy thinking about the symbolism. He's been captivated by one photo of one of the alleged terrorists. He looks like any ordinary Indian, a young man in jeans and T-shirt, except he's holding an assault rifle.

A suspected terrorist is seen with a rifle outside the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminal railway station in Mumbai, India, on Thursday. Maharahstra Times-The Times of India/AP hide caption
A suspected terrorist is seen with a rifle outside the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminal railway station in Mumbai, India, on Thursday.
Maharahstra Times-The Times of India/APSTEVE INSKEEP, Host:
We are in the third day of military operations in the streets of Mumbai, India's commercial capital. The attacks on five-star hotels there have gotten commentators Sandip Roy thinking about the hotel's symbolism, and he's been captivated by one picture.
M: The post-mortem of the act, its political fallout, its connections to the war on terror, will surely come later. But the image of the young man in the T-shirt in five-star Mumbai haunts me. I don't know who he was. He might be an Islamic militant from Pakistan. He might be a frustrated, small, city boy shut out of the IT economy. He might be a village boy who trained in a terror camp somewhere. It doesn't really matter because his message was loud and clear. He said to booming India, pay attention to me.
INSKEEP: Commentator Sandip Roy is an editor with New American Media and host of New America Now on KALW in San Francisco. You're listening to Morning Edition from NPR News.
Copyright © 2008 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.