Café Leopold, Colaba

It all started at this popular watering hole a little before 9.30 p.m. when three men inside the busy restaurant pulled out machine guns from haversacks and began to shoot indiscriminately.

“There were three men shooting inside Café Leopold. As the crowd started fleeing, two more people started shooting from outside the hotel. I saw one of them reload the gun and again engaged in the shooting spree. The entire episode lasted for some 20 minutes,” said Sheikh Pasha, who was hanging out near the restobar in Colaba. According to him, the attackers had ‘huge guns’ and were carrying a haversack bag.

“After the firing ended, I saw a man and a woman lying in a pool of blood. The assailants later took the lane which leads to the Taj hotel,” said Andrei Tambunan, a freelance American photographer who was at a cyber café, near the restobar. Six bodies, including those of some foreigners, were taken out of the restobar.

The Taj Mahal Hotel

After Leopold, next to be attacked was the Taj Mahal Hotel, a few hundred metres away. The attackers, eyewitness said, entered the Taj hotel at around 10 pm.

“The men came on the ground floor towards the pool side area and started firing indiscriminately at anything that moved. A man next to me was shot and died,” said an eyewitness who managed to escape the hotel. Senior officials of Hindustan Lever were present on the first floor of the hotel when the incident occurred.

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