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By Adam Mynott
BBC News, Mumbai

Guests trapped in a Mumbai hotel seized by gunmen last month have told the BBC they were given instructions by police that may have led to more people dying.

Police told a group hiding in the Taj Mahal Palace hotel that it was safe to leave the building, a survivor said.

But members of the group were shot and killed by militant gunmen as they were making their way out.

The senior policeman in charge of the operation in the hotel has denied the allegations against his officers.

‘Suspicious’

A prominent Mumbai gynaecologist, Dr Prashant Mangeshikar, was trapped in the Taj Mahal hotel along with hundreds of other guests as gunmen stormed into the building, firing indiscriminately.

Terrified, he and others barricaded themselves into a room and waited.

"I refused to move away and the people who ran ahead of me, about 20 or 30 of them, all of them died"
Dr Prashant Mangeshikar

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Eventually, in the early hours of the morning, police officers made it through to where they were hiding and told people it was safe to leave the hotel because the gunmen were cornered on another floor.

Some went ahead but Dr Mangeshikar held back.

“I was a little suspicious that the police were actually sending these guys down a different route where the terrorists were supposed to be,” he said.

“I refused to move away and the people who ran ahead of me, about 20 or 30 of them, all of them died.”

A dress designer from the city says her aunt was shot dead and her cousin seriously wounded because they followed police instructions to try to leave.

The designer, Shilpa, described the police conduct as disgraceful.

They had no right, she said, to risk people’s lives.

The senior policeman in charge of the operation in the hotel has denied these allegations against his officers.

But they add to growing criticism of the police and how they responded to the attack in which more than 170 people were killed.

Listen to Adam Mynott’s full report on BBC World Service Newshouron 21 December at 1200, 2000 or 2100 GMT.</i

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation

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