Mumbai bomb attacks: Eyewitness accounts of their night of terror
‘We chased them, but they escaped’
Sunil Babar, senior inspector of the MRA Marg police station, and two other policemen were walking down DN Road near CST [the railway station], when two people started firing at them from the other side of the divider. ”It was dark and the road was not well lit. We could not make out who was firing at us. But they were shooting at us with sophisticated weapons,” Babar said. Ducking bullets, the policemen tried to chase them down, but the duo managed to escape.
Two armed men were also inside the CST station building. They were on platforms six and seven, mostly used by outstation trains. They lobbed grenades and fired from their automatic weapons. Manish Kumar, a witness, said: ”The gunmen were wearing jackets and carrying haversacks.” Police cordoned off the entire area. Ambulances were seen whizzing around, with siren-blaring police vans.
‘Taxi exploded under new flyover’
I had just returned from Kolkata and was having a business meeting at hotel Golden Chariot near the domestic airport when at about 10.45pm I heard a blast. Initially, I dismissed it as people celebrating India’s victory in the cricket match against England.
But then my driver called to say that there had been a bomb blast. I left immediately. – Sandip Tarkas, executive, Future Group
‘It sounded like an automatic gun’
I was eating out with my family at Bade Miyan, a roadside stall, in a lane near Gateway of India. At about 9.55pm we heard gunshots in the nearby lane, but ignored it thinking it could be fire-crackers. It was only when the firing continued and people started running helter-skelter shouting ”firing, firing”, we realised something was wrong. It sounded like an automatic gun and then we heard a couple of single shots fired from a pistol.
At that moment we couldn’t think of anything but to run with the crowd. Even the workers at the stall followed us. I couldn’t make out if the firing was from Taj [the Taj Mahal hotel] or Café Leopold. It was very chaotic. More than 100 people were running. The place was cordoned. Buses were evacuated. We initially considered taking the train back to Khar, but thought it better to stay away from public transport and took a cab instead. —Siddharth Debnani (19), student
‘A body was blown away’
Jyoti Rathod, an eyewitness to the blast that occurred near BPT colony at Wadibunder Road near Sandhurst Road, said the explosive had been kept in a taxi.
”The blast sight was frightening. A man’s body was blown away. I saw another one dead. I had come to attend a marriage function of a relative. I had just passed the spot where the blast occurred. My three-year-old son was accompanying me and he has been crying ever since.”
Abandoned vehicle leads to bomb scare
When Farooq Abdul Aziz’s blue Maruti Esteem ran out of fuel on Tulsi Pipe Road at Lower Parel, he parked the car by the roadside near Kamala Mills and took his family home in a taxi to Mahim. Later he filled a bottle with petrol and got back to get his car with his brother on a motorcycle. Reaching the place, he saw a posse of policemen standing around his Âvehicle.
The bomb-detection squad had Âbroken one of the car’s windows. The police, thinking it to be an abandoned vehicle, checked it thoroughly before giving it back to its owner. ”It is unfortunate, but the police did their duty,” a calm Aziz said.
They fled in a police van
The shooters, after exchanging fire with the police at Cama Hospital, escaped in a police van. As the white van with the yellow beacon sped off on the crowded roads, one of the shooters sitting behind the driver started firing through the window. He was sporting a black shirt. — Daily News & Analysis staff reporters
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