'Terrorists were barbaric and sadistic'

The terrorists achieved what they wanted to and have managed to send out panic waves across the country though they were defeated at the end.

While precise planning was the key to their success another reason why they managed to keep the security forces at bay for such a long time was because they had kept hostages with them.

NSG commandos, who took part in the operation, told rediff.com that the terrorists were "sadistic and barbaric".

"Although we cannot reveal the exact nature of torture meted out to hostages, we can say that the hostages were not given food or water for the entire three days," he said.

The NSG commando says that some of the guards and the guests were tortured and some of them were bled to death. A guard and a guest were found dead in a room. They were stripped, beaten, their legs chained and were bled to death. This only goes on to show how sadistic they were by nature.

The NSG is still unable to confirm how many people terrorists had been kept hostage. Not all were kept in the same room, the NSG commando said.

Some hostages who were kept together were moved by the terrorists from floor to floor. Every time they wanted to move from floor to floor and shift the hostages, they hurled grenades to distract the NSG.

The major part of the damage and torture of the guests were committed before the NSG stormed the building.

As most of the guests hid in their rooms and bathrooms, terrorists stormed into their rooms and shot them dead. Only a handful of hostages (around25) were with the terrorists.

The NSG commando says that it is highly unlikely that the terrorists could have given the hostages any food or water. The terrorists themselves had very little supply of food and we were aware that they on two occasions did manage to smuggle in food from the store room, the NSG commando also said.

The hostages who were with the terrorists were kept in a room and were made to kneel down on the floor at all times. It looks like they killed at least five hostages every day. However, most of the hostages were killed on the last day of the operation when they realized that the battle was coming to an end.