After the 26/11 terror attacks on Mumbai, when top officials of the Maharashtra state police sat down one evening to put together a home-grown commando squad and a police SWAT (special weapons and tactics) team, they had no idea about the response the call for applications to Force One would evoke.

Over 2,500 applications poured in?from constabulary, officers and members of the armed wings of the Maharashtra police?including from Cuffe Parade beat officer Rajendra Kamble, one of the first to locate the dingy used by the Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorists; and commando rider from Local Arms-II Rakesh Bhoir, one of the first to take Ajmal Kasab to Nair Hospital.

Starting March 2009, the recruits underwent 15 days of physical induction, followed by two, two-month-long phases of initial training and another four months of intensive physical, firing and combat training. Today, after several levels of screening, only the 211 toughest men are part of the force, now in the final stages of training at the State Reserve Police Force Group I headquarters in Pune. The first state-level police SWAT team and the first urban terrorism combat squad has been imparted the best secrets of the trade by experts from the defence force and premier squads across the country.

Force One will be deployed later this month. Another 54 of the Anti-Terrorist Squad Quick Response Team are now being trained and will be inducted at a later date.

Force One chief, deputy inspector general S Jagannathan, said the curriculum was shaped out of commando training courses and modified to include a battle preparedness test, a battle assault obstacle course, the ?ultimate endurance? test, and training in tactical firing.

The SPRF training ground has acquired the look of a battlefield. There is a smoke room, infrastructure for carrying out grenade attacks, rooms for combat situations with targets placed next to hostages, and huge grounds with makeshift urban hindrances.

The first stages of training included using balls as targets, with bullets provided later. It is estimated that the commandos used up over 70,000 bullets in the last three months. The men, equipped with NSG?s primary weapon, the German MP5?the quickest?and AK-47s, snipers, and a Glock, were made to rush through smoke rooms, survive serial grenade attacks and fires and rescue hostages in combat situations.

There were other aspects to the training. ?We called for case diaries of all the major assassinations?from Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi to recent terrorist attacks?and studied them to make sure we learned from the mistakes that had been made,? says deputy superintendent of police BS Kendre, a former counter-insurgency cop trained with the Grey Hounds. There was a three-day-long session, he adds, when 10 Mumbai Police recruits who were at the spot of the 26/11 attack, were made to narrate all that they had seen, with the entire class analysing the situation. Some lectures involved watching unedited footages of victims? bodies?the slides would not change till every commando had seen them.

The commandos also went through a special combat exercise in civil clothes, learning to fight in ?Magarpatta?, a model of a township ?with towers, important structures, malls, theatres and foreigners? created for training.

The High Energy Materials Research Laboratory and the College of Military Engineering trained the recruits in identifying explosives. This is the first time the military has been involved in designing extensive training modules for a police team.

Once deployed, the first exercise for the commandos would be to do a survey of the spots targeted in the November 26 attack and to go on ?night walks on various routes across sensitive targets across cities like Mumbai and other important places to ensure a repeat of the mistakes of 26/11 does not occur,? Kendre says.

Each hit team of six commandos?with one explosives expert, one paramedic, the rest trained in firing and combat?will be led by a commando chosen purely on the basis of merit. ?So if you are the best in the team, then even if you are a constable and your team has many officers, you get to lead the team,? says Jagannathan. ?The message is clear?when terror strikes, Force One will stand and strike as one,? he says.