‘I got courage as Team India was praying for me’

BCCI auditor, who was trapped at the Taj hotel, recounts his horror story

It was just another night, he thought, when he checked into the Taj Palace in Colaba. He switched on the TV and watched Virender Sehwag and Sachin Tendulkar toy with the English attack. He called a friend in the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) office to say how Viru was making mincemeat of the England bowlers but before he could complete the sentence he had realised that he could himself fall to the fire of the terrorists.

When his friends, who were giving finishing touches to the Champions League work, broke the news of the terror attack, he was speechless. He did not know what to do but he knew what not to do. “I didn’t want to create panic among family members. I didn’t want to tell them of my predicament,” PB Srinivasan, an auditor of the BCCI, recalled.

He dialled the reception, which advised him to stay inside. He tried to follow the developments on TV but soon the network was blacked out in the hotel.

Using his phone he kept in touch with his friends in the BCCI, among whom was Sundar Raman, the CEO of the Champions League. Then, he got a call from the Indian team’s assistant manager Russell Radhakrishnan. “The entire Team is praying for you,” Russell told Srinivasan from the Team India hotel in Bhubaneswar.

“It gave me a lot of courage and encouragement. I decided to wait till the army or commandos come to rescue my rescue,” he said. Soon, he realised that the fifth floor of the building was in flames and he was on the third floor. He lost hope and tried to escape through the emergency fire exit. But his friends in the BCCI office suggested that he open the window and switch on the lights. He did exactly that and waved for help from his room.

The fire brigade immediately came to his rescue. They evacuated him with the help of a crane. He was then given a lift to the Cricket Centre by a Good Samaritan at around 3 am. From there they went to a Union Minister’s house whose daughter has also been part of the Champions League work. In the morning he spoke to the Board bosses Shashank Manohar and N Srinivasan before leaving to Chennai thinking was it just another night.