Blood washes away happy feet on Colaba Causeway

Like a child playing with a gun,” is how shopkeeper Suraj Singh described the gunman who opened fire at Café Leopold on Colaba Causeway on Wednesday night. A day after the carnage...

“Like a child playing with a gun,” is how shopkeeper Suraj Singh described the gunman who opened fire at Café Leopold on Colaba Causeway on Wednesday night. A day after the carnage, curious bystanders and local residents stood outside the cafe, one of Mumbai’s most popular watering holes, looking at the shards of glass and other fragments and debris that lay strewn across the pavement outside the shop.

Frequented by both foreigners and locals, the café was packed on Wednesday night when two gunmen opened fire shooting indiscriminately at everyone in the vicinity — from shopkeepers to pub-goers and innocent bystanders. “First we heard a loud explosion and then saw a man coming out of nowhere. He started firing point blank at Café Leopold. Everyone started running for their lives. It was absolute chaos,” said Singh, who has a stall of his own, a few yards from Café Leopold.

Bystanders say the men seemed to have appeared from among the mixed blend of people who frequent Colaba Causeway on any given day—¿ youngsters browsing through affordable streetside wares, itinerant vendors, foreign tourists and children. “Around 9:20 pm, I heard the firing. The gunman, wearing a bag, was very young. He didn’t even have a moustache and looked like he was just out of college,” said taxi driver Abdul Quayyum, who was in the area at the time.

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Quayyum says while one gunman shot at Café Leopold, the other fired random shots aimed at the opposite side of the road. “One waiter from Leopold started running desperately and was shot at. Another lady crossing the road was shot in the back,” he said.

After firing at Café Leopold, the gunmen moved down Nowroji Ferdonji Street towards the Taj Mahal hotel. During this time, they fired randomly at people on both sides of the street. The entire episode lasted about 20 twenty minutes,” he said.

The horrific events that transpired on Wednesday night have shopkeepers around Colaba Causeway convinced that they have a very rough period ahead since the location of the shootings was one that was heavily frequented by tourists.

“They’ll be scared to come back now. There are people, even locals who come here every day. But foreigners certainly won’t return,” said Sitesh Awasthi, a shopkeeper whose stall lies just metres from Café Leopold.

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Quayyum said he ferried four foreigners to the airport, since they were desperate to get out. “They had a 20-day visa stamped and had just arrived. They said they were going to forget about a Christmas in Goa, and leave the country as soon as possible,” he said

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