NSG to recruit ‘Negotiators’ for hostage situations

NEW DELHI: Learning from the experience of the 2008 Mumbai 26/11 attacks, the National Security Guards ( NSG) is set to bring on board “tactical negotiators” who can be used by the agency to interact with terrorists in a hostage situation in the event of a terror attack in future.


The Home Ministry has approved NSG’s proposal to allow it to hire such professionals who can be psychological experts and help the security agencies in negotiating with terrorists when civilians are taken hostage, like what happened during the Mumbai 26/11 attacks.

At present, usually a senior police official or a top Intelligence official is roped in for such negotiations who may not be the best person for the job given the lack of expertise. A source in the NSG said the force is studying the concept of professional negotiators in elite commando forces in the US and UK where talented professionals in the field of psychology and professors of universities act as resource persons or a permanent group used by them for negotiations in a hostage situation.

The tactical negotiators desired by the NSG should have good communication and persuasive skills and must be capable of understanding realtime behavioural patterns, language and dialect of the terrorists in the event of a communication channel opening up during a hostage situation.

During the 26/11 attacks, Pakistani terrorists holed up in Nariman House had called up the Israeli embassy in Washington to negotiate for the release of several Israeli hostages inside the building. In fact, one of the terrorists told the Israeli officials to ask India to release the captured terrorist Ajmal Kasab in exchange for the hostages.

The Israeli officials, who had to depend on an interpreter to talk to the terrorists, tried to negotiate the release but failed as the terrorists killed all the hostages. The 26/11 terrorists holed up at Oberoi Hotel had also called up a private TV channel saying they were Indians hailing from Hyderabad and demanded the release of all terrorists in Indian jails.

During the IC 814 hostage situation in Kandahar in 1999, the then Intelligence Bureau chief Ajit Doval along with Nehchal Sandhu, who went on to become the IB chief, were the chief negotiators. The hostage episode on foreign soil in Afghanistan ended after India agreed to free three dreaded terrorists in exchange for 175 passengers on board.

Doval later admitted pressure from government and hysteria back home by relatives of passengers prevented the negotiators from getting the hijackers to scale down their demand to release just one terrorist.