It was a countdown of sorts for one doctor and three nurses in the nurses’ station opposite the psychiatry building at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS) here on Sunday. They lay flat on the floor inside the station, trying to dodge the bullets that they feared will tear through the walls from the criminal ward on the ground floor of the building opposite theirs.
Vishwanath, who was holed up in the ward, was opening fire every 10 minutes from the window, aiming directly at the nurses’ station, eyewitnesses said.
While that was the scene at the nurses’ station, a senior professor of psychiatry, whose office is right above the site of the firing, was stuck within the confines of his office for over an hour as he had no clue if the situation was under control. Patients too were stuck wherever they were, he said, wishing not to be named.
Speaking to The Hindu over phone even as the scenes unfolded a floor below his, he said he first heard commotion, people running and shouting, and sounds of gunshots being fired.
“I don’t have a TV in my office and didn’t know if he has been cornered or not. I have to take the stairs to go down and it is near the staircase the incident took place,” he said, before he finally made his way out. “I have never seen anything of this kind ever,” he said after he was finally out, referring to his 20-year stint at NIMHANS.
Confusion was the other overriding feeling on the campus, especially for visitors. From the time that the police realised there was an armed prisoner in the Psychiatry Building, the entrances to the Convention Centre area and subway were sealed. People who were within the cordoned-off areas at the time were swiftly escorted outside.
However, the entire situation was contained to the psychiatry building and did not spill over to the others where business went on normally. In fact, patients just a few hundred feet away were completely unaware of the drama going on nearby and the gunshots went unnoticed till the sounds of the final burst of bullets pierced the air.
As the Garuda team entered the guardroom and fired at Vishwanath, there was a burst of gunshots in quick succession which echoed through the campus around the ward. The crowds then started growing and the police had to clear the area to allow the ambulances to go in. As people struggled to catch a glimpse of the shooter when he was brought out, the drama quickly ended with the policemen coming and announcing that Vishwanath had been “neutralised”.
