Mumbai, Oct. 27: A 25-year-old gunman from Patna held commuters in a Mumbai double-decker hostage this morning, allegedly spraying bullets and claiming he wanted to kill Raj Thackeray, before police shot him dead in an operation.

Some details of the rush-hour “encounter” in the heart of Mumbai, however, remained hazy amid questions whether a trigger-happy police had made enough effort to capture Rahul Raj, the lone hijacker with a country-made revolver, alive.

Officers claimed Rahul fired three bullets “indiscriminately” inside the bus — changing their initial version that he shot at the policemen surrounding the vehicle — so they had to shoot him to save the 12-15 cowering passengers.

A commuter, Manoj Bhagat, was shot in the left thigh but officers admitted they couldn’t be sure if he had been hit by the police or the hijacker.

The hostages and Rahul were on the upper deck; the driver had parked the bus outside the Bail Bazar police chowki in Kamani, a busy locality in Kurla, and rushed out with the conductors and lower-deck passengers.

Additional commissioner of police (ACP) Sadanand Date said the force fired 13 bullets, first from the streets and then after storming the bus, hitting the hijacker four times.

Asked if Rahul could not be immobilised in any other way, he said: “He was threatening the passengers. He had fired three rounds indiscriminately. When police asked him to drop the gun and surrender, he refused. Facing a firearm, there was no other option.”

Rahul, declared dead on arrival at Ghatkopar’s Rajawadi hospital from “multiple” bullet injuries in the head and one in the chest, may take to his pyre the secret of his bizarre motives and behaviour.

Rahul Raj

Even his family and friends in Patna could provide no clues why the “affable” X-ray technician, who arrived in Mumbai yesterday to look for a job, would suddenly attempt to avenge the attacks by Thackeray’s men on Bihari youths.

After whipping out his gun and announcing his intention to kill the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief — whose men beat up Bihari railway job seekers on October 19 — Rahul dictated a “message” to the frightened passengers.

“He asked us to jot it down on pieces of paper and throw the chits out of the window so the police would know what he wanted,” said Abdul Rashid Sheikh, who was travelling with his wife Rafia.

Deputy commissioner Milind Bharambe said the police found a Rs 50 note and a Rs 10 note with “I only want to kill Raj Thackeray and no one else” scribbled on them.

Some passengers said the “tall, young hijacker” had already tied a commuter to a pole on the stairs but it wasn’t clear how he did it holding a gun, and with what he had tied the person.

“He asked the passengers for a cellphone saying he wanted to speak to the police commissioner. None gave him one. He then sent me downstairs to get one,” said Mahendra Ghule, the upper-deck conductor.

That was a mistake, because once on the lower deck, the conductor asked driver A.H. Khan to stop immediately. Within minutes, two police teams had left VP Nagar and Kurla police stations, wearing bullet-proof vests.

Bystanders said they watched the hijacker sometimes point his .315-bore revolver out of the window towards the street, and sometimes get up and pace the upper deck.

A resident who claimed to have filmed the scene but would not be quoted said he had heard Rahul fire inside the bus several times, thus corroborating the police’s final version.

ACP Mohammed Javed, who led the police teams, said when they stormed the bus, Raj was still brandishing the gun while the passengers crouched in their seats.

“It was a quick and professional response. Safety of the passengers was of utmost importance,” ACP Date said.

No snipers or special teams were part of the operation though the Mumbai police have a Quick Response Team of commandos trained to deal with emergencies.

Date said injured passenger Bhagat had a bullet hole in his thigh but no bullet; so it could not be said immediately who shot him. The financial executive is recovering after emergency surgery.

The police found an identity card on Rahul and a pair of keys to Imperial Hotel in Saki Naka.

The shooting evoked fury in Bihar, bringing arch-rivals Lalu Prasad, Nitish Kumar and Ram Vilas Paswan together after nearly two decades. At a meeting with the Prime Minister at the head of an all-Bihar team, they condemned the police action as “murder” and demanded a judicial probe.

The row received more fuel when deputy chief minister R.R. Patil backed the police saying: “If a madman gets into a bus and goes on a shooting spree, this is the response they will get.”

In the evening, however, Manmohan Singh spoke to chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh over the phone, after which Patil announced a probe headed by the chief secretary.

MNS general secretary Nitin Sardesai said: “The incident shows there is a security threat to Rajsaheb and yet the government has lowered his cover from category Z to Y.”