Two stabbed at MPT Colony

MUMBAI, May 21: A senior Mumbai Port Trust MPT officer and his 25-year-old daughter were brutally stabbed at their residence in Colaba ea...

MUMBAI, May 21: A senior Mumbai Port Trust MPT officer and his 25-year-old daughter were brutally stabbed at their residence in Colaba early on Wednesday morning while resisting five armed dacoits. They were rushed to hospital and are out of danger.

The incident, the first of its kind in the 70-year-old MPT Officers8217; Colony, next to Sassoon Docks, has sent shockwaves throughout the neighbourhood considering that the society is supposed to be a 8220;highly-protected zone8221;.

Captain David Patrao, who had a bypass surgery in February this year, was asleep in his ground-floor flat along with his wife, Beryl, and daughter Naomi when their doorbell rang around 5.45 a.m.

Thinking it was the maidservant, 55-year-old Beryl sleepily got up and opened the door, only to be confronted by five ruffianly youths who thrust a gate-pass at her face and asked curtly, 8220;Did you issue this letter?8221;

Suspecting something amiss, Beryl tried to shut the door but it was forced open by the gang which produced choppers and rushed into the long corridor of the house.

8220;I started screaming but one of them gagged me and flung me to the floor. Hearing the commotion, my husband and daughter rushed into the passage and grappled with the intruders,8221; Beryl told Express Newsline. Showing presence of mind during the violent scuffle, she scrambled out to the garden and screamed for help.

Meanwhile, Captain Patrao was slashed twice on his head and the back of his neck while his daughter sustained a head injury and her fingers were cut while struggling with the intruders. The gang, however, panicked and escaped empty-handed.

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8220;They kept asking us for the keys,8221; said Beryl calmly as she sat in the corridor which had been witness to the bloody violence only hours earlier.

8220;I saw them flee. One of them was peeling off his blood-soaked shirt as he fled,8221; recounted the Bell family, next-door neighbours of the Patraos.

The entrance to the Patrao residence was caked with blood and the passage littered with blood-soaked rags, used to stem the blood from Captain Patrao8217;s head. The bloody trails led right through the long corridor and into the garden, a visible reminder of the grisly 10-minute drama.

Several senior officials including MBPT chairman Sharad Kale, and senior police officers visited the scene of the crime at the quaint old three-storey Jackson House.

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The Patraos8217; neighbours are equally numbed following this unprecedented attack. Housewife Vanita Shahane, a resident of the same building for the past 10 years, told Express Newsline: 8220;We had just woken up when we heard Beryl screaming for help. It8217;s high time the Port Trust security gets its act together.8221;

Incidentally, Shahane8217;s flat was burgled back in 1991 and jewellery worth over Rs 3 lakh was stolen. The culprits were never caught.

A senior officer from the MPT security, who did not wish to be identified, admitted there were security lapses. 8220;The wall that separates Sassoon Docks from the MPT Colony has also got a gaping hole through which the culprits escaped,8221; he said.

According to the Colaba police, the assailants had inside information before carrying out the attack. Senior inspector Crime Abdul Rauf said the police were confident of nabbing the culprits by Thursday.