Doctor stuck in room for over 20 hours

Mumbai: When Dr P.N. Vaswani dropped in to the Taj Palace Hotel to call on a patient, little did he know that he was actually stepping into a terrain that would be ravaged by terrorists within the next hour.

The urologist and his nurse had gone to the hotel on Wednesday night to attend to his patient, a VVIP from Qatar, but got trapped in the room for over 20 hours when the hotel came under terror attacks.

Gunshots and blasts

Narrating his ordeal to Gulf News, Vasvani said, "I went there at around 9.30 pm on Wednesday and within ten minutes finished my duty. When I came down the lift with my nurse to the lobby, I could hear someone calling out to me to move back immediately. Before I could understand what was going on, there were gunshots and blasts everywhere," said Vasvani.

He said he could hear people screaming and sounds of shattering objects from a close distance.

"I ran back towards the lift and reached the 9th floor of the new building where my patient was staying. Then it was hours of trauma that we went through," he said.