Mumbai police officers describe nightmare of attack
At a Mumbai hospital, one officers recalls a hand grenade rolling toward him. Another, whose colleagues were killed in a police van, survived by lying still among their bodies.
Reporting from Mumbai — It was the longest few seconds of his life, said Indian policeman Vijay Powar: watching a hand grenade roll toward him, tossed by militants from the floor above, and realizing he could do nothing about it. The only thing that saved his life, he said from a hospital bed, was a wall that partially deflected the blast.
The police officers of Mumbai, often armed with nothing more than courage and aging bolt-action rifles, bore the brunt of last week's fighting against gunmen who attacked the Indian city.
When the three days of terror were over, more than 170 people were dead and hundreds more injured.
Today, Powar and other officers in the wards of Bombay Hospital recounted their moments on the front lines, mulling what might have been, why they survived and others didn't.
Since the attack, a steady parade of relatives, reporters and politicians have been traipsing through the halls during the day. Once visiting hours are over and the crowds disappear, the wounded officers are left with their personal hells.
For Arun Jadhav of the Mumbai anti-terrorism squad, his demons aren't about hand grenades. He is haunted instead by a feeling that his boss of 12 years, the squad's chief, will walk through the door any minute and call out: "OK, let's go, we have a job to do."
Last Wednesday evening, anti-terror chief Hemant Karkare, Jadhav and six other officers were trying to respond to initial reports that a railway station, a hospital and a cinema were under attack.
As they headed toward the Metro Theater, without any sense how large the attack was or what was going on, they approached a car in the road. As they slowed down, two attackers jumped out of the vehicle and killed everyone in the police van except Jadhav.
Debate continues on whether the shooting was planned or a chance encounter, but it served the terrorists well by eliminating the city's anti-terror leadership at the start of their attack, spreading further confusion. The two attackers then pushed the bodies of the three dead officers out of the front seat and took the vehicle on a killing spree with five bodies still in the back of the van -- including Jadhav. "I survived by pretending I was dead," he said.
Amid all the frenzied activity in the Bombay Hospital ward today, a handful of bureaucrats suddenly appeared with clipboards and start handing each of the wounded officers a check for 50,000 rupies, or about $1,000.
