Taj was warned of terrorist attack: Ratan Tata

MUMBAI, India (CNN) — The Taj Mahal Hotel had been warned about the possibility of a terrorist attack before a 60-hour rampage began Wednesday, leaving at least 183 people dead, the chairman of the company that owns the hotel said Saturday.

The hotel heightened security as a result, Tata Group chairman Ratan Tata said in a taped interview with Fareed Zakaria on CNN’s “GPS” that will air Sunday.

There were indications, though, that the hotel relaxed the security before the attack.

“It’s ironic that we did have such a warning and we did have some measures,” Tata said. “People couldn’t park their cars in the portico where you had to go through a metal detector,” he said, explaining one of the measures. “But if I look at what we had — which all of us complained about — it could not have stopped what took place. They didn’t come through that entrance,” he said, referring to the entrance that had a metal detector. He did not identify which entrance had the security device.

“They came from somewhere in the back. They planned everything,” he said of the attackers. “I believe the first thing they did, they shot a sniffer dog and his handler. They went through the kitchen, they knew what they were doing.”