British terror victims fly home from Mumbai

Harnish Patel, 29, from Putney, was discharged from Mumbai's Jaslok hospital with Dianne and Michael Murphy, and brought back to Britain in an air ambulance.

Mr Murphy, who was the most severely injured in the shootings, had to be transported in a special cardiac ambulance.The trio were today being taken to hospitals nearer their homes to continue their treatment.

As they boarded the plane, Mr Patel said: "I don't think anybody knows how severe my injury was. I was shot three times. It's only today that they told me that.

"Both bullets in my leg actually went all the way through, and the one in my side caused fluid to come into the lungs. I didn't realise that when the bullet exits, that's where it makes the biggest mess. They went through two thighs and missed basically every bone and artery."

But he admitted he was increasingly plagued by memories of the event. He said: "There were two old people next to me who'd been shot clean through their faces, and they were piled on top of each other, and their faces were hanging off. I almost vomited."

The Murphys and Mr Patel were the only Britons aboard the SAS Boeing 737-800 advanced ambulance aircraft, which had been provided by the Swedish National Air Ambulance.

Some Britons in other hospitals were not yet in a stable enough condition to travel, said Nawaz Antia, the consular officer at Jaslok.

Mr Patel said he was now looking forward to meeting his family again as he tried to put the events of Mumbai behind him.

He said: "It's just a bit sad that this has happened - that it's ending like this. I've just got off one plane and now I'm getting on another. It's not the ideal way to come back home.

"I'm looking forward to seeing my family. I've had so many friends and well-wishers from all over the globe - from Hong Kong, I've had loads of people from the UK, I've had people from the US. The nurses were saying to me, 'You are getting so many calls you'll jam up the switchboard'."

Mr Patel said his parents wanted to fly out to see him in hospital, but he said no, adding: "I should have let my parents come. They wanted to. But I'm very independent. I like to go my own way. I was saying,'It's only a flesh wound'. I got that from Monty Python."

Mr Patel said the British consul was now trying to arrange a hospital bed close to his parents' house in Havant.

He said: "They're trying to put me up somewhere on the South Coast so I can be near my parents. If not I'll go to a London hospital, which will at least give me the chance to catch up with everybody... the doctors say I should be on my feet within three or four weeks.

"After a while the drugs they gave me to help me sleep and kill the pain stopped working. Your body becomes immune to them."

Mr Patel spent yesterday with two distant uncles, neither of whom he had met before the shootings.

He said: "I was planning to meet them later - but not like this."