The Hindu : Front Page : Did some Taj guests die after police “error”?

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Monday, Dec 22, 2008
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Did some Taj guests die after police “error”?

Hasan Suroor

LONDON: In a report that will embarrass the Mumbai police, the BBC on Sunday quoted guests who survived the terror attack on Taj Hotel as saying that some people may have died as they tried to escape after they were misled by the police into believing that it was safe to leave.

Allegation denied

However, the police denied the allegation.

One survivor , Dr. Prashant Mangeshikar, a gynaecologist who was trapped in the hotel for several hours, said some guests were shot and killed by terrorists after police told them it was safe to get away.

Dr. Mangeshikar said that he and some others had barricaded themselves in a room and waited. In the early hours of the morning, police officers who made it through to where they were hiding reportedly told them it was safe to leave the hotel because the gunmen were cornered on another floor.

Suspicion saved him

Some went ahead, but Dr. Mangeshikar refused to leave.

“I was a little suspicious that the police were actually sending these guys down a different route where the terrorists were supposed to be. I refused to move away and the people who ran ahead of me, about 20 or 30 of them, all of them died,” the BBC reported him as saying.

Another guest, Shilpa, a dress designer said that her aunt was shot dead and her cousin seriously wounded because they followed police instructions to try to leave.

‘Disgraceful’

Describing the police conduct as “disgraceful,” she said: “They had no right to risk people’s lives.”

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