PROVIDENCE — Sanjiv Dhar, the owner of two popular local Indian restaurants, trained for a short time in the 1980s at the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower Hotel, one of the main targets in the terror attacks in Mumbai that have killed more than 150 people.

Dhar’s brother now works for the company that owns the Taj hotels and easily could have been at the “very luxurious property” during the attacks. He frequents the Taj –– but when Dhar reached him, he was dining at another Taj property across the city.

Like others in the local Indian community, though, Dhar didn’t know his family was safe when he got word of the attacks.

The owner of Kabob and Curry on Providence’s Thayer Street and the Rasoi in Pawtucket, Dhar first learned of the attacks in Mumbai via text message from a friend. He can’t even remember who sent that first message because many more flowed in on his Blackberry, to the tune of, “Is your family OK? We are fine.”

At Rasoi, when he read that first message, Dhar turned on the television, but CNN wasn’t even reporting the news yet. It might have been 11 a.m. Wednesday, or noon, he recalled last night while sitting down for a few minutes at Kabob and Curry.

Dhar immediately rushed home to watch the Indian television news channels on satellite.

His brother, Rajiv Dhar, is a chief finance officer for a division of Tata, which owns the Taj group of hotels. Sanjiv Dhar said his brother knew 10 to 15 people killed in the attacks, none of them close friends. He is now safe, as he has left the country on a previously planned business trip.

Here in Rhode Island, Dhar has nearly two dozen employees at his restaurants, many of them with family members and friends living in India.

“Everybody’s fine,” he said last evening. “I’ve spoken with pretty much everyone [who works for me]. Thank God, there isn’t anybody whose family has been affected –– but in general, everyone is traumatized a little bit.”

Others in the Rhode Island Indian community expressed similar thankful sentiments yesterday.

It appears that those from India who now live here do not have direct ties with anyone injured or killed in the attacks, according to the head of a local community service group.

The Indian community in Rhode Island numbers about 5,000 people — some 1,200 to 1,500 families, said Dr. Amrut Patel of Cranston, who heads Namaskar India, which holds cultural functions, promotes education about India and does charity work within the Indian community.

“So far, to my knowledge, there is no bad news,” said Patel, whose organization’s name stands for Salute India. “Fortunately, personally here in our community locally, no one’s been involved.”

Patel, who is a medical doctor in private practice in Cranston, said his organization has perhaps 50 to 100 volunteers. He knew of a couple of local residents who were in Mumbai during the attacks and are safe.

One man, Snehal Shah, who lives in Barrington with his family, was in Mumbai at the airport to fly back to Rhode Island when the attack began, according to his sister-in-law, Vibha Shah.

Vibha Shah and her husband, Fenil Shah, who also live in Barrington but are from India, have many family members in the suburbs outside of Mumbai (formerly Bombay). Fenil Shah’s parents heard one of the bombs in Vila Parle, a suburb of Mumbai, his wife said last evening.

Snehal Shah’s plane had not taken off when the attack began, but his flight left Mumbai safely and he is now home in Rhode Island, Vibha Shah said last evening.

“It’s sad. I know people say Bombay has been through this a lot of times, but still, seeing it on CNN all the time, and knowing it was so close to ...” Vibha Shah said, as her voice trailed off. “I just wish it was not there. But I guess everybody does.”

Vibha Shah’s husband, Fenil, had previously planned to travel to India on Monday, she said. They’ve heard nothing of flight delays, she said.

“It should be fine,” she said. “I’m not worried about it.”

Dhar said he believes India is “a huge target” because of the way of life there, the fact that it’s a democracy and because it is a financial world hub and a place that draws Westerners to it. He is worried that young people with little financial resources are drawn to become suicide bombers for small sums of money. He says India has been weak in its response to terrorism, which, according to a news report he saw this week, has taken the lives of 4,000 people in India since 2001.

“A lot needs to be done,” he said of the problem. “Don’t think it is an Indian problem or an American problem, but a world problem.”

World leaders, he believes, need to come together and consider, “What have we done to cause this?” And then, what do we do to end it?

kbramson@projo.com