‘Kasab put gun to my head’: Man whose car was hijacked by 26/11 attackers

Restaurateur Sharan Arasa, whose car was hijacked by Kasab, Khan, says that fateful night made him ‘sensitive’

For restaurateur Sharan Arasa, the minutes during which his car was hijacked by Lashkar-e-Taiba operative Ajmal Kasab and his associate are mostly a “blur”, 10 years later. What he remembers clearly is the feeling of the barrel of Kasab’s gun on his temple. “I thought he would shoot me and drive off,” said 37-year-old Arasa.

Sharan Arasa says he used the bullet-ridden car till 2013. (Pratik Chorge/HT Photo)

On the night of November 26, 2008, Arasa and two of his friends were in Arasa’s recently-bought silver Skoda, driving down to meet a friend at The Oberoi. It was late and the streets in south Mumbai were deserted. Near Mantralaya, the trio noticed a police car, a Toyota Qualis, approach them from the opposite side of the road. One of its wheels was flat and sparks were flying out as the metal rim dragged against the surface of the road. Arasa and his friends assumed that the men in the car were cops, but the two men who stepped out of the police car were Kasab and Ismail Khan, two of the 10 armed Pakistanis who carried out terror attacks at different locations in south Mumbai that night.

“They [the terrorists] asked us to stop the car,” recalled Arasa. “As they approached us, I realised they are not the police. I was pulled out of the driving seat and my friends also stepped out of the car. Out of habit, I shut the engine and took the keys with me.” Kasab asked Arasa for the car keys, which Arasa had thrown down on the road when he realised the men in the car weren’t the police.

“I picked up the keys. As I was picking it up, I felt the barrel of the gun against my temple. At that moment, I looked at my friend across me, we both felt that it was the end of me,” Arasa said. “Everybody says that when one sees death, your entire life flashes in front of the eyes. But for me, it was a blur. My mind was blank and numb as I picked up the keys.”

When Kasab and his associate got in Arasa’s car and drove off, Arasa’s first thought was that he would have to explain the loss of the car to his father. “I thought my dad was going to be mad at me for losing the car. We had bought it a few months earlier.”

Eventually, the Skoda would stop a few feet away from a police barricade on Chowpatty and in the shootout that followed, Khan was killed and Kasab was captured alive but injured. The car, marked with bullet holes from the shootout, was returned to Arasa later. Arasa continued to use it till 2013.

“When we planned to sell it off, I was told by some to auction the car. But I did not want to make money out of it; it would have been insensitive,” said Arasa. He says surviving the encounter with the terrorists has made him “more sensitive” towards others, but it isn’t a defining moment. “Now I only remember it when I see something in the news or maybe around the 26/11 anniversary,” he said.