World | India
Mother survives, son dies in Mumbai terror attack
Malati Devi Gupta is oblivious to the pain from four bullet wounds in her leg, hand and back that she sustained when a trigger-happy terrorist rampaged though Mumbai's main railway station on Wednesday night.
- By Pamela Raghunath, Correspondent
- Published: 23:24 November 28, 2008
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Mumbai: Malati Devi Gupta is oblivious to the pain from four bullet wounds in her leg, hand and back that she sustained when a trigger-happy terrorist rampaged though Mumbai's main railway station on Wednesday night.
Sitting on a bed in the government-run J.J. Hospital, she wails in a daze that she should have been the one to die in the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) shooting and not her son.
As she and her son Vinod, 32, waited to catch a train to Patna in the concourse for long-distance trains in CST on Wednesday night, random firing broke out.
"Immediately, my son shouted, 'Let's run' and tried to drag me away to safety. In the process, he was hit in the chest and collapsed at once. I myself received several gunshots," she told Gulf News, pointing to her bandaged wounds.
She constantly shakes her head and asks, choking with sorrow, "What is the use of surviving when my son is no more? How will his wife and two small children manage without him?"
Railway police constable Adik Rao, 39, did not lose a moment when he heard the firing and saw the terrorists on platform No 1 of CST for suburban trains.
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"I started asking the crowds of commuters to move away quickly and pointed out the terrorist to Inspector Shinde. At that time, the terrorist saw me and fired at me."
Barely able to speak due to the pain from bullet injuries in the stomach, he says he still shakes with horror. "But I try to think of my children and that calms me down."
In another bed, an injured Nafisa Begum crying inconsolably over the loss of her six-year-old daughter Afreen.
"They were waiting to catch an early morning train to Aurangabad, having missed the earlier one in the evening," says her mother Hafisa Begum Baban Hussain, who rushed her from Aurangabad after hearing of the tragedy.
"My son-in-law had just gone to buy some food for his wife and daughter when the firing took place. My little granddaughter could not take the impact of the gunshot," she says. Her own daughter was hit in the leg and has been operated upon.
Since Wednesday night, 149 injured have been brought to the J.J. Hospital in south-central Mumbai where "we have conducted 30 major operations and 80 minor ones for upper and lower limbs, chest, vascular and other injuries," Dr H.H. Jadhav, the hospital superintendent, said. "Everything is under control now."
Dr B.M. Sabnis, Dean of J.J. Hospital, Dr Shingare, another senior doctor, and Jadhav rushed to the hospital as soon as they saw the news on TV about the firing in Colaba.
"We have enough manpower, materials and medicines. Of the 300 bottles of blood in stock, we have used 71 bottles."
Asked about the massive task of providing immediate treatment to the injured, he said that like other doctors, he is trained and experienced in disaster situations such as the Latur earthquake, floods in Osmanabad, a near-epidemic of gastroenteritis in Mumbai and the recent bomb blasts in the city.
Some patients with minor injuries have been discharged, but four are still critical.
Injuries from gunshots and explosions have all been treated, he says.
The J.J. Hospital has conducted autopsies on 53 bodies, he adds.
The dead include seven foreigners - Sudad Lashmi, a Japanese, Andas Done Tiwari, a Briton, and Schimitt Daphane, Jujgan Habrij Kadolt and Michael Stuart Moss, whose nationalities are not known.
The other two have not been identified.
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