“The operation was difficult because at night, it would be pitch dark and we couldn’t see anything. The terrorists had put some of the rooms on fire and the hotel was filled with smoke,” an NSG commando told The Sunday Express minutes after the Taj Mahal hotel operation (protocol doesn’t allow them to reveal identities).

“It took us over three days to kill four terrorists because of the layout of the hotel and the number of people who were holed up inside,” said the 27-year-old from Haryana. “But we are trained to stay without food and sleep for a week and that helped us ever since we entered the hotel on Thursday morning,” he said.

On the high death toll inside the hotel, the commando said the terrorists would booby trap victims’ bodies with grenades.

The commando spoke nonchalantly on how his team went for the kill. “The terrorists seemed very familiar with the place. We finally trapped them on the first and ground floors. All this while, they kept throwing grenades at us. But we did a ‘control explosion’, which led to a fire in two restaurants. Two of the terrorists were charred to death and one collapsed of asphyxiation and we shot him dead,” he said.

Did he ever fear for his life—wish he weren’t there? “Hum toh sirf yehi kaam kartein hai, dar nahin lagta (This is our job, we are not scared),” he smiled. He then packed up and boarded the BEST bus that was waiting to take him to the airport, from where he would leave for Delhi.

... contd.