Three years before 9/11, a Bengali paper published a chilling warning

Three years before the 11 September 2001 attacks brought down the twin towers of New York's World Trade Centre. The year was 1998. The information was precise and the warning would turn out to be prescient. Militants from outside were converging for a secret conclave somewhere in north India, possibly Kashmir. They were planning attacks on American targets in Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, the US embassy in Nairobi and, hold your breath, New York.

The report in the Bengali newspaper Sangbad Pratidin, in fact, named the World Trade Centre as one of the targets. It also named Osama bin Laden and published a photograph of the terror mastermind, long before the two became familiar to most people in September 2001.

The extraordinary report was published by the Bengali broadsheet, which had a small circulation. But it was based on a credible source in India's Intelligence Bureau. The intelligence officer sought out journalists Kunal Ghosh (now a Trinamool Congress leader) and Sakshar Sengupta to share the information, the photograph of bin Laden and documents in Arabic and Persian that outlined the plot being hatched. The officer felt the information was sensitive, correct and deserved the attention of the security establishment.

The Kolkata bureau of the IB would have submitted the report to its headquarters, but the report was apparently brushed aside as implausible.

Why such precise and specific information was ignored may never be known. Whether the information was shared with the US is also not clear. The two reporters, however, had enough faith in their source to persuade the editor to publish it prominently on the front page, along with the photograph of bin Laden.

Surprisingly, even the prominent display failed to draw the attention of the security establishment. The US consulate in Calcutta too would have had a CIA officer stationed there, but the ‘news’ either escaped his attention or his report, like that of the IB officer, was ignored as wild gossip.

The report had appeared on 23 October 1998, recalls Ghosh, and the report appeared under his and Sengupta's joint byline. Ghosh later entered politics to join the Trinamool Congress.

It was a scoop, Ghosh recalls with justifiable pride in a Facebook post, and an international exclusive of the kind that may not have appeared in the Indian media before.

Both reporters, however, were trolled heavily, Ghosh remembers. They overnight became the butt of jokes and their peers laughed at them. Nobody followed up on the report and the story ‘died’ — until the world woke up to the sight of two planes ramming into the twin towers almost three years after their report had appeared.

Sengupta, who now works with the Bengali daily Vande Mataram, told National Herald that he regrets that nobody took the report seriously at the time. He and Ghosh were pursuing a different story when they received a call from their source. They went to meet him, and he handed them hard copies of documents.

He admits that while they sensed the information was explosive, they had not fully understood the gravity of the details. They had, however, decided to trust their source, who was convinced that the information was both credible and serious.

The IB officer, Ghosh recalls, was particularly concerned about militants crossing the Bangladesh border and travelling towards Kashmir, while Kolkata was being used as a transit route. They had first met the officer at the home of late Congress leader and Union minister Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi. They kept in touch and, having seen the importance Dasmunshi gave to the officer, instinctively felt he would not peddle nonsense.

Ghosh has shared an image of the newspaper report on social media. Both he and Sengupta say, however, that they have no regret about not receiving any recognition for their scoop.

What they do regret is the death of 2,977 people, including 243 firefighters and rescue workers, in the attack on the twin towers. Many survivors later died from injuries or diseases caused by exposure to toxic fumes.

If only their warning had been heeded, they often lament every year on yet another anniversary of 9/11, this year bringing up the 25th.