Crowd-control police take up position

Mumbai, May 3 (UNI) Helmeted and armed police have taken up positions and one side of the road outside Hinduja Hospital at Mahim, where doctors are making a last-ditch effort to save senior BJP leader Pramod Mahajan, has been blocked to traffic even as the party workers and sympathisers have started converging at the hospital, fearing the worst.

With Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh still inside the hospital for the last half an hour, his deputy R R Patil of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) has also reached the Hinduja.

Police have put up barricades to regulate traffic and crowd outside the hospital whose all gates have been closed. Only the VIPs are allowed entry into the hospital.

Armed with automatic and semi-automatic firearms besides the usual batons, police wearing helmets have taken up positions inside and outside the hospital in an apparant bid to guard VIPs and control crowd.

Former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and former BJP president L K Advani are expected to arrive at the hospital anytime, the party sources said.

UNI GVS-JM SA RP KN1641