The Hindu : Front Page : Heart-rending scenes in hospital

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Friday, Nov 28, 2008
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Heart-rending scenes in hospital

Anupama Katakam

MUMBAI: Heart-rending scenes were witnessed outside the four hospitals, which took in the bulk of the injured and the dead, on Thursday morning.

As anxious and shocked relatives arrived to claim bodies or look for the injured, social workers helped them with information. Doctors and interns rushed in and out of the building, as a never-ending line of ambulances brought in more victims.

Families of the victims The Hindu spoke to had only words of praise for the hospitals. “In such a difficult situation we are getting the best help,” said Ajaz Dalal who was waiting to claim the body of an uncle who died in the Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) firing.

Most of the injured were shifted to the government run JJ hospital by the morning. Bodies were also taken there for post mortem before being released to waiting relatives.

The biggest crowd was at the JJ hospital mortuary gate. Kalidas Subbarao Pote had been waiting there the whole night. His father-in-law Sitaram Mallapa Sukre died while shielding Pote’s wife from gun fire. “My wife who is in a state of shock told us that when the terrorists opened fire, he protected her by hugging her. He was hit and died on the spot.”

Paruram Mahmunkar, a ward boy at the GT hospital, was tired. “We have not stopped working since 10 p.m. last night,” he said. “I have never seen anything like this before.” The GT hospital is close to the Cama and Albless Hospital, where many died in a grenade attack.

“While we were struggling to take care of the injured, we heard that a terrorist had entered the hospital grounds and had killed two of our staff,” said Mahmunkar. “The situation was very tense inside the hospital.”

Two ward boys Thakur Budha Waghela (25) and Bhagan Shinde (40) were killed when a terrorist opened fire in their room in the residential quarters of the hospital. Mahmunkar says he heard that Waghela and Shinde opened the door on hearing knocks. A man apparently asked them for water and then shot them. Another resident said everybody switched off the lights and locked themselves in when they heard the firing. “We heard machine guns going off for quite some time after that.”

Due to its proximity to the CST where the first firing took place, the St. George’s hospital admitted the largest number of victims. The hospital’s official list had 65 dead, four of them children, and 103 injured.

The father of two of the dead children, Janardhan from Jharkhand, was waiting to claim their bodies. The distraught man said he had dropped his family at the station. He had left the station when he heard about the firing. It was only in the morning that his wife called to say the children were dead.

Significantly, there is no dearth of offers of help. “Ever since the attack, we have had hundreds of people coming in to donate blood,” said Raju Padwal, a hospital clerk at St. Georges. Students from the medical college nearby had promised to mobilise more people to donate blood should the hospital require it. “Even after the 2006 serial bomb blasts we did not get this kind of help.”

Since two of the attacks have taken place outside hospitals and given the fact that there have been blasts in and near hospitals in other cities recently, the police threw a tight ring of security around the hospitals. No one, unless they could prove they were hospital workers or related to the victims, were allowed in.

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