Man who took bullets while saving guests loses battle for life

At around 2 am, Mangeshikar recalls that about a hundreds guests were evacuated when the terrorist opened fire at them from close quarters. “The three cops who were overseeing the evacuation operation suddenly disappeared and in that skirmish we were at a loss as to where to proceed. That’s when the hotel staff went beyond the call of duty and stood in a line in order to guide us to one of the four rooms of the business centre. They could have scrambled to safety themselves as they knew all the back passages well,” said Dr Mangeshikar, an anaesthetist and intensivist at the Bombay and Breach Candy hospitals.

It was at this moment that a bullet hit Kamble, who worked with the maintenance department at the Taj.

“The bullet hit the side of his spine and tore his spleen. It had perforated his bowels leaving his intestines exposed,” said Mangeshikar who stayed up the whole night trying to save a sinking Kamble with the help of sheets available in the hotel room and the painkillers borrowed from foreign nationals in the room.

“He was very brave. He was going through an extreme degree of pain yet he knew when to keep quite during the three times the terrorists came back to start firing outside the room,” said Dr Mangeshikar.

Kamble’s ordeal went on till 8 am on Thursday till the group was finally rescued. Since then, he has been fighting a losing battle in the Critical Care Unit at JJ hospital. “All along we have been telling his wife that his injuries are minor so as to calm her down,” said Prakash Padwal, a colleague at the Taj while waiting to collect Kamble’s body at the hospital on Wednesday afternoon. Padwal, a friend of the Kamble family for the last 10 years, had finished his day shift and left the hotel last Wednesday evening.

Kamble is survived by his wife and two children—eight-year-old Rohan and two-year-old Atharwa. He had been employed with the Taj for 20 years and was the sole breadwinner of his family that lives in a 240-sq ft chawl in Borivili.

Said Dr Arun Patil, the general surgeon at JJ hospital, “When Kamble was brought in, he was in a critical state as the infection had already started spreading due to the precious time lost. I have operated on so many patients but I felt really bad when despite all our efforts to save him he did not survive.”