New Delhi - Well-heeled businessmen, corporate honchos,
celebrities dining by candlelight - that is the usual night at
Mumbai's Taj hotel, which is as much a symbol of India's economic
prowess and its pockets of affluence as the city in which it has
stood for more than a hundred years.
But early on Thursday, fire spewed out of the dome-shaped roof of
the building after gunshots and grenade blasts rent the air as a
group of heavily armed terrorists stormed the building and fired
indiscriminately, killing guests and hotel staff.
'I was having dinner with some of my colleagues when two masked
men barged into the restaurant,' NN Krishnadas a member of India's
Parliament was quoted as saying by the IANS news agency. 'They fired
indiscriminately. I saw three people being shot. The terrorists left
the room soon after that.'
'The hotel staff rushed us into another room after the terrorists
moved out of the restaurant,' he said. 'We stayed there through the
night. In the morning, the commandos rescued us.'
Krishnadas was among the luckier guests at the Taj. Others rescued
include a prominent French scientist, a top executive of a
multinational firm and one of India's leading businessmen.
Some of the guests told television channels that as they exited
the hotel in the early hours of Thursday, they received calls from
hotel security asking them to switch off their lights and remain in
their rooms.
'It plunged into darkness soon, and I locked myself up in a
toilet,' said one unidentified woman who was later rescued by
firefighters through her hotel window.
Another said she had seen a body lying in the corridor outside her
room.
A British national said the terrorists were asking people whether
they had British or US passports, adding that he escaped because he
did not reveal his nationality.
'The terrorists were not more than 20 to 25 years of age,' the
British national was quoted as saying. 'They were dressed casually in
jeans and T-shirts but were very aggressive in their demeanour. They
kept screaming that they wanted anyone with a British or American
passport.'
'There were 15 of us,' he said. 'Two of the terrorists, while
screaming constantly, took us up the stairs to the 18th floor.
Luckily for us, the room was full of smoke, and two of us escaped
from the stairs.'
'Another three escaped after us, but I have no idea about the
others,' he said.
An elite force of commandos helped by the Mumbai police and army
and navy personnel were engaged in an operation to rescue the
remaining guests.
Some members of the hotel's top management were also believed to
be in the hotel.
Several members of the staff stood looking numb and in shock
outside the historic hotel that overlooks Mumbai's main landmark, the
Gateway of India on the edge of the Arabian Sea.
According to folklore, Parsi industrialist Jamshetji Nusserwanji
Tata, founder of India's now global Tata Group, built the hotel after
he was refused entry to a now-defunct but then famous hotel that did
not admit non-European guests.
The Taj, which opened in 1903, cost the then-princely sum of a
quarter of a million dollars. Tata, the legend goes, bought many of
the hotel's furnishings himself, including the latest European gizmos
like soda and ice-making machines, elevators and an electric
generator. It was one of the first buildings in Mumbai to have
electricity.
Today, the Taj is indisputably India's most famous hotel and one
of the most luxurious.
The staff are used to pandering to the rich and famous - ranging
over the years from British Queen Elizabeth II, Elvis Presley, John
Lennon, Prince Charles, former US president Bill Clinton to
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis - not hostage-taking gunmen.
But like Mumbai, the Taj has seen acts of terrorism in the past. A
bomb went off in a car parked opposite the heritage site during
serial bombings in 1993. In 2003, terrorists set of bombs near India
Gate, a few metres from hotel.
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