•Shekhar Gupta: We come to the Oberoi now, or the Oberoi Trident complex that you might call it. How was this challenge different from what you faced at the Taj?

J K Dutt: You know well over here when the terrorist came, it was again a matter of terrorism personified. They entered into the Khyber restaurant, they shot people indiscriminately and they immediately took ten persons hostages, they took them to the top floor.

•Shekhar Gupta: They basically pushed them up the staircase.

J K Dutt: Yes, they were two of them with their weapons pointing, no body has the ..no body would dare to sort of not do what they were demanding. So, they went up the stairs and at the top floor over there they started shooting at them. Six of them were killed on the spot, four of them played dead.

•Shekhar Gupta: They pretended to be dead.

J K Dutt: They pretended to be dead but they were only injured and in fact when they got the chance later, when the terrorists left that spot they immediately ran to the roof top. Now, at the Khyber, same thing happened. There was a lot of bloodshed over there, when I visited that place, the service lanes, the kitchen, the hotel staff had been attacked, the guests had been attacked; those who were living in the rooms those persons had been attacked and over here when we came again; you see one was that the environment was totally new for the NSG; we did not really know the set up of the hotel. We tried to get the maps; in Taj we were able to get them in the beginning but it took some time before some body could really explain the set up of the rooms. Same thing happened over here, by the time we got the thing here, you know the terrorists had been moving. Only thing that I would say here that we were able to, the marcos over here were also trying to pin them down to one particular place.

... contd.