In death, as in life, Tukaram Ombale gave Mumbai something to hold onto.
It was a little past midnight on November 27, 2008, when a white Skoda came speeding down the Marine Drive, headlights blazing, its wipers running to make it harder for anyone outside to see in.
Mumbai had already been under attack for nearly two hours.
Ten men had come ashore near Colaba a few hours earlier, split into pairs and headed towards their targets: the railway station, two five-star hotels, a café popular with backpackers, and a Jewish outreach centre few people outside the community even knew existed.
By the time the Skoda reached a police barricade near Girgaum Chowpatty, Mumbai Police were operating on fragmented radio messages, still trying to understand the scale of what was unfolding across the city.
Assistant Sub-Inspector Tukaram Omble was manning that barricade
A former Army signalman who had joined the police as a constable in 1991, Omble watched as the car swerved towards the roadblock and came to a stop. One of the gunmen inside, Abu Ismail, was killed in the exchange that followed. The other, a 21-year-old named Ajmal Kasab, fell out of the vehicle and appeared, briefly, to be surrendering.
He wasn't.
