There's no healing touch here

MUMBAI: Bhavesh Vaghela just can���t stop begging for cover while he narrates how gunmen entered the house and shot his brother on Wednesday night. The attackers in black clothes, who fired at civilians on DN Road in front of the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, entered the lane adjacent to the Times building and proceeded towards Cama Hospital.

The residents of hutments behind the hospital cannot forget how terrorists knocked on the doors and killed whoever came in the way. ���They passed by our hut and then returned after some time. They first knocked on our door, but we kept silent.

Then they pushed open the door of the adjacent room where my brother Thakur Vaghela was having dinner with his 6-year-old son Yash. This was the only home where they saw light as all the other homes had switched off lights due to fear.

They shot my brother in front of his kid without giving him a second chance,��� tells Bhavesh, who���s still shivering.
Thakur Budha Vaghela worked as a sweeper in the GT hospital. Another GT employee, wardboy Bhaagan Gangaram Shinde, who lived nearby died in the attack while he was sitting outside his hut.

A day after the night of terror, the lanes leading to Cama hospital still wear a sombre mood. The patients admitted to the nursing home are leaving the hospital in fear. The attack by two unknown gunmen which began at 10.15 pm on Wednesday night, went on till around 3 am killing at least three Cama employees and two cops. The panic subsided, but the fear grew as morning approached.

According to a wardboy at Cama hospital, ���Two gunmen dressed in black barged inside the hospital firing indiscriminately. They must have come from the direction of CST, passing the police canteen area. Because there was also firing from behind the hospital���s main ward,��� said a wardboy.

The bullets fired from behind the building had broken the window panes and left several marks of blood and bullets on the walls and furniture inside the wards. According to a nurse, the main ward on the first floor was locked from within and curtained so they couldn���t come in.

Other employees outside the ward ran up and hid on the terrace. But they went upstairs and till the sixth floor where they had a scuffle with the policemen who had reached by the time. But it was well before 3 am before Cama hospital dean Dr Chhaya Lad said two of the hospital���s Class 2 servants and a guard had died in the firing. She denied the hospital being emptied even as patients��� families queued up for discharge.

Patients say they can���t stay back now as the doctors have refused to take the responsibility. Somaiya Ansari, was alone with her newly-born kid when the firing started at 10 pm while her husband had gone home to fetch her dinner. Her husband immediately decided to take her to some other hospital. There are many others who decided to leave the hospital as it ���no more safe��� for them.

Patients at GT Hospital, located just behind Cama, said they heard loud bangs in the night but were unaware about the terror attack till late in the night when the injured were brought in. GT hospital superintendent AV Kulkarni said 33 injured in the firing were admitted to GT, while 8 were brought dead. Later, 13 were moved to other hospitals, while sfour people under treatment died.