New Delhi, July 2: The Indian physician had ordered a pasta and fresh orange juice that had arrived on his table and he was about to eat when he heard the commotion near the door. Several young men had walked in shouting.

"At first, I thought it was just some people fooling around," said the doctor who works in Dhaka. "Then, I heard the shooting and realised this was something serious."

The doctor requested this newspaper to keep his name confidential.

The doctor in his forties is among the hostages who were able to walk away unharmed from the Friday night siege of Holey Artisan Bakery. He was in the restaurant, a witness to the events inside, from about 8.30pm through the night until the gunmen allowed him and several other hostages to leave shortly before Bangladeshi soldiers stormed the restaurant this morning.

The doctor, a native of Delhi who studied medicine in Russia and worked with a senior Delhi-based doctor before moving to Dhaka in December 2003, had decided to have a weekend-eve dinner outside.

"They looked like normal college-going young men," the doctor said, describing the gunmen. "They wore T-shirts, and spoke in English and Bangla. They questioned people in the room, I replied in Bangla - they said if we cooperate, they would not harm us," he told The Telegraph tonight, speaking on phone from a Dhaka police office in between questioning by detectives.

While some of those rescued have reported that the gunmen had asked some hostages to recite verses from the Quran, he said he did not recall any such dialogue.

"Nobody asked me to recite anything and if this happened, it was not in my presence," he said. The attackers at various times during the night asked the hostages to put their heads down on their tables.

He declined for now to describe details of the events that he witnessed inside the restaurant. "I have been questioned by the police today - I've been here since morning, I haven't gone home," he said.

"We were instructed to put our heads on our tables, and I complied," he said.

Past midnight in Dhaka on Saturday, the doctor was still in the police station, unsure why he had been kept so long for questioning. "I want to go home, get back to my hospital, return to my job as a doctor," he said. "I plan to continue working here."