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Survivors of the Mumbai terror attacks have accused police of causing the death of some of those trapped inside the Taj Mahal hotel by telling them it was safe to leave when armed militants were still at large. The fleeing guests were subsequently shot dead.
Dr Prashant Mangeshikar, a leading gynaecologist, had been trapped in the Taj Mahal hotel with hundreds of other guests as the militants stormed into the 105-year-old building, spraying gunfire. He and scores of others barricaded themselves into a room and waited.
In the early hours of the following morning, police reached the group and told them it was safe to leave the hotel because four militants had been cornered on a different floor. "I was suspicious that the police were sending these guys down a different route where the terrorists were supposed to be," said Mangeshikar. "I refused to move away and the people who ran ahead of me, 20 or 30 of them, all died."
The allegation came as the attacked hotels, the Taj Mahal and the Trident-Oberoi, reopened amid heightened security. A prayer ceremony including Hindu chants and a reading from the Koran, marked its opening four weeks after the attacks. Around 32 guests and staff were killed by the gunmen.
For Mumbai, still shocked and bewildered, the reopening of the establishments will represent a symbolic yet important effort to move on from the attacks which killed 170. While hotel bookings have been down by 30 per cent, officials at the Trident said they had been inundated with inquiries.
Part of the Taj Mahal hotel was also reopened. Up to 1000 clients and guests were invited to a gala reception.
But the reopening of parts of the iconic Taj comes with more than just a new plaster and paint job. There are new security measures and officials promise a new type of luxury hotel: an "invisible fortress" that can protect guests as well as pamper them.
The Trident area of the Oberoi hotel complex also reopened, though the main areas of both luxury hotels are expected to stay closed for months. Police manned barricades outside the Taj while armed, undercover guards kept watch inside. Everyone walking into the lobby was asked for proof of their hotel reservation. Visitors handed their bags over for inspection and walked through metal detectors as their luggage was scanned through x-ray screening machines.
At the Taj Mahal, hotel officials unveiled a memorial for the 31 staff and guests who died in the three-day siege. The Tree of Life is based on a 2m-tall bronze sculpture that originally stood beneath the dome - and survived the siege unharmed.
The claim by Mangeshikar and others that some guests at the Taj Mahal hotel died because of the police action - denied by Mumbai officials - comes as India is trying to overhaul its counter-terrorism measures. Two bills, one to double the number of days suspects can be questioned without charge and another to establish an FBI-style agency, were passed last week.
The Indian Air Force has deployed MiG-29 combat aircraft on the outskirts of New Delhi as protection against any incursion from Pakistan. The fighters supplemented conventional ground-based air defence platforms such as surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft guns.
India's military continues to maintain a state of "high alert" following the Mumbai terror strikes with its frontline fighters armed and its warships deployed even though senior leaders claimed war was not a solution.
Radar and air defence batteries had also been activated along the over 4000km-long frontier with Pakistan, a large proportion of it in the Himalayas.
Indian warships had also deployed across the Arabian Sea with enough resources to last them for several weeks. Leave for defence personnel had been curtailed.
- NZ HERALD STAFF, AP, INDEPENDENT
