'Mumbai killers recall Babri incident'

MUMBAI: When Parikh tried to plead with them, they said, "Babri masjid yaad hai? Godhra yaad hai?'' They then sprayed the group with bullets. "The next thing I knew, I was under the bodies, bent in double, unable to breathe, with blood flowing down from everyone over me, causing me to suffocate���I had given up all hope of survival.'' He had been shot in his hip.

After the terrorists left with the two women (who were later shot), he lay there for a few hours, silent, and gradually realized that his friends were dead. Over the next few hours, he realized that there were four among them who were alive, "and we communicated by touching each other as we were afraid that our voices would be heard and this was the only support we could give each other. At some point the following morning, three to four terrorists, whose voices were different from the first two, came back with a camera to film us''.

Parikh was one of these four survivors. The others were Siddharth Tyagi, an HSBC executive, and Amardeep Sethi and Ketan Desai who work with a Kirloskar company. Although they spent close to 24 hours together���first among the dead bodies, and later inside an AC plant room���they barely spoke, and only in whispers, for fear of being found. They drank water from the AC unit, and relieved themselves in the same area. "We got a good breeze there,'' said Parikh. "But along with that, we also got the smell of our own litter.''

The group was finally rescued around 11 am on Friday morning. Although they had been wounded, Parikh said, "the trauma was more than the pain''.