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I’ll remember the relief on hostages’ faces: commando

MUMBAI: “I will remember the scared faces of the hostages and the relief on them when they saw us. We were like God to them. They did not understand our language, but they would come and hug us,” recalls Anand Tiwari (name changed to protect identity), 29, an NSG commando.

Lying in a private hospital bed, Tiwari’s face shows emotion only when he speaks the people he saved. “Each room had one or two hostages,” says Tiwari, who was part of the NSG team in the Taj Mahal hotel. As he came down from the sixth floor, he could hear people screaming. “We told them we were the police and then they would open the door.”

However, some foreigners did not understand English, so they did not open the door. We had to break down the door. The moment they saw us, they would raise their hands. Some cried. We would pacify them and take them to safety,” he recounts. Walking through the corridors of death, a horrific image stood before Tiwari. “The kitchen was full of dead bodies,” he recalls.

Tiwari was joined by a hotel guide in this heroic endeavour. The guide would turn the key in the door and move aside. On the third floor, they encountered a terrorist. “He shot at the guide. There was an old lady in the next room. I shot at the terrorist. I do not know if the bullets hit him. Then I removed the woman from the room. She was white [with fear]. In this chaos, I was shot. I took both the people out of the hotel.”

Navigating the hotel was a tough task. “We did not have maps. There was thick smoke all around and everything was dark. We took the fire exits and first went up to the sixth floor and moved down. In a combat, the person at an elevated position always has an advantage. One person on top is equivalent to 200 people down. So, the strategy is usually to reach the top,” explains Tiwari.

Tiwari fought for a day from morning till night, without food or water. He thinks it is no big a deal. “We are trained to go without food for four to five days,” he says with a smile. He displays a sincerity of purpose and an unwavering focus on the operation. “When we were called for the operation, we switched off our mobile phones and removed our watches. Our focus was only on the task ahead.”

Tiwari masks the horror of having been on the frontline with a calm demeanour. He lies on his bed with three bullet wounds in his back. His family is not aware of this fact. In fact they are not even aware of his valiant act. “Why to inform them? They will worry unnecessarily. Bullets are nothing. The wounds heal in five days,” he says. He is married and has a child.

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