Mumbai Terror Attacks: They used tarpaulins to carry injured

By Wednesday night Snehal Shah, a diamond broker from Opera House, was drained of all emotion and strength. At 6.55 pm, a group of diamond brokers including Shah, was seated in the office of the Diamond Merchants’ Association on the ground floor when they heard a loud explosion. They ran out to investigate thinking a gas cylinder had exploded at one of the food stalls in the busy Khau Galli.

“But none of us was prepared for the horrific sight that lay before us,” Shah said. “We saw a litter of mangled corpses and bloodied body parts among the remains of stalls in Khau Galli. As if by reflex we started shouting to one another to halt passing vehicles and move the injured to Harkisondas Hospital.

Some had lost an arm, others a leg. We gathered them up in loose tarpaulin sheets that had been hung over the food stalls owing to the rain, and bundled them into taxis. So desperate was the situation that one Omni van had two bodies on the seats and one in the boot.”

Shah and his friends did not abandon their posts after depositing the injured in the safe care of the doctors. “We stood there manning the traffic barricades on the road nearby until 11.00 pm,” said Shah.