BOMBAY, 23 April 2006 — Senior leader and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) General Secretary Pramod Mahajan was battling for his life yesterday after being shot from close range by his estranged younger brother in an attack whose cause remained a mystery.
Doctors at the P.D. Hinduja Hospital put the 56-year-old high-profile politician on ventilator after a grueling four-hour operation but were unable to extricate the three bullets fired from Pravin Mahajan’s revolver at his 15th floor apartment early yesterday morning.
Dr. Rele, a liver specialist, was summoned from London for a possible liver transplant. The BJP leaders were also consulting if to call doctors from the US. Late in the evening two doctors from the army checked Mahajan and concurred with the treatment being given by the doctors of the Hinduja Hospital.
The bullets traveled right through the lower part of the abdomen, piercing the diaphragm and damaging the head of the pancreas as well as the duodenum, a hospital bulletin said.
The bullets also damaged the inferior vinacava, the main blood vein in the abdomen, and the small intestine. The former minister in former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s government had to be given 25 bottles of blood.
“Mahajan was brought into the hospital at around 8.20 a.m. with three bullet injuries in the lower chest and abdomen,” Anupam Verma, director of the Hinduja Hospital, told reporters later. “There was massive blood loss and he was immediately taken for surgery...He is on a ventilator support.”
Verma said the three bullets that hit Mahajan, who has often been seen as a successor to Vajpayee and L.K. Advani for the leadership of the party, would be retrieved after his condition became stable.
“His condition continues to be critical. More tests and investigations would be carried out in next six to 10 hours,” Verma told reporters in the evening.
After the shooting, Pravin Mahajan walked up to the Worli police station and surrendered. Police officials put the 47-year-old realtor under arrest, seized his revolver and said he would be kept in a police lock-up for the night before producing him in a court today.
The 7.30 a.m. shooting, dramatic by itself, stunned the country. President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh joined political leaders to express their shock, and wish him speedy recovery.
Doctors admitted that Mahajan was “quite critical” and in the hospital’s intensive care unit (ICU).
Police initially said a property dispute lay behind the attempted murder. But when the third Mahajan brother, Prakash, challenged the claim from his Aurangabad home, police changed their version and said Pravin Mahajan was depressed. Pramod Mahajan has four siblings, including two sisters.
Pravin Mahajan’s lawyer, Nandkumar Rajurkar, aired the same view. Rajurkar said: “He (Pravin) has been suffering from mental disorder for the last few months.”
Police Commissioner A.N. Roy, however, said that Pravin Mahajan appeared to be of “normal and sound” mind during interrogation after he surrendered.
“He talked quite reasonably with the police. A family dispute may have caused this incident,” said Roy.
— With input from agencies
