Blown up in full bloom- Siblings and friend from city killed in blast
SAMYABRATA RAY GOSWAMI
Pune, Feb. 14: Three bright and sprightly youngsters from Calcutta, siblings Ankik and Anindyee Dhar and their friend Shilpa Goenka, were among the nine persons killed in last evening’s blast.
The explosion ripped through the table at German Bakery where Ankik and Anindyee were hanging around with their friends, shattering their bodies to mangled masses.
Ankik, 23, who graduated from IIT Kharagpur last year in electronics and electrical communication engineering, was working with JP Morgan in Mumbai.
The youngster, remembered by his IIT batchmates as “Tempo-da” for his exuberance and boundless energy, was in Pune to visit younger sister Anindyee, 19, a student of arts at Fergusson College.
The Dhars were residents of Salt Lake’s BB block.
The siblings had gone to German Bakery for coffee with their Calcutta friend Shilpa, who worked in Mumbai with Japanese finance major Nomura. Also with them were common friends P. Sundari and Vinita Gadani.
Sundari and Vinita were colleagues in a software company in Pune.
Shilpa, whose home is in Lake Town in Calcutta, was Ankik’s batchmate at Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan school in Salt Lake and had done her engineering from BITS, Mesra, near Ranchi.
Bright, funny and happy-go-lucky, Ankik was a devoted brother. He travelled 360km up and down to Pune from Malad in suburban Mumbai every weekend to see his sister.
Yesterday evening, Ankik, Anindyee and their three friends were sitting at a table on the bakery’s verandah next to the street when they spotted a blue and red backpack under their table.
“They summoned a waiter, Gokul Nepali, and told them about the bag which seemed to belong to no one. As Gokul opened the bag, it exploded, instantly killing all five at the table and the waiter. The blast was so massive that a part of the ceiling near the cash counter collapsed,” said Dinesh Mohite of Bund Garden police station.
The siblings’ father Kamalendu Dhar, a chief chemist with ONGC, had just been transferred to Sibsagar in Assam but had come home to Calcutta yesterday.
“We could not tell their parents about the deaths. We just told them they were critical,” said Priyanka Sinha, Anindyee’s friend and a second-year law student in Pune.
Kamalendu and his wife landed in Pune’s Lohegaon Airport around noon today after a five-hour hopping flight from Calcutta, and said he planned to take his children home for treatment.
“We broke the news to them in the car as we drove to the Sassoon Hospital mortuary,” said his Pune-based colleague P. Deshpande.
Sitting on a broken pavement outside the hospital “deadhouse”, the senior Dhar’s quiet stillness matched the silence inside the mortuary.
His wife’s silent sobs stretched out in wordless prayer as she stared at the heavens now and then in search of an answer for her loss.
After waiting under a tree for nearly three hours, she lost consciousness when finally Ankik and Anindyee’s remains were handed over by the police.
“The bodies are in such a state that they cannot be taken back to Calcutta. It was decided to cremate them here,” said Sourabh Shukla, a friend of Ankik. The siblings were cremated at Pune’s Vaikunth crematorium a little after 5pm today.
Ankik used to stay with Sourabh and his roommates when in Pune.
“One of his IIT friends is our roommate and that’s how we knew him since the past year. He stayed with us on Friday night, he would always do that when in the city,” Sourabh said.
Shilpa’s uncle Gopal Goenka, who lives in Mumbai, was bringing her body back to Calcutta, said a member of the Goenka family in Lake Town.
Ankik was one of the brightest students of his class at Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, which Anindyee also attended.
“He was academically brilliant, so was Anindyee. She scored 90 per cent in her school final exams and we joined Fergusson College in Pune together,” said Nilanjana Saha, 19, her schoolmate of 14 years.
“A budding poet, singer and athlete, Anindyee was an all-rounder. She topped the first-year BA exams,” said her Fergusson college professor Prashant D.
A distraught Kamalendu and his wife will fly back to Calcutta tomorrow. Their youngest son Aishik is due to appear for his Class XII board examinations this year.
“He is our only support now,” said Kamalendu, choking on his tears and holding on to his shattered wife.
At the Goenka household in Lake Town, the elders are finding it difficult to come to terms with their loss.
“Our family is very conservative. But Shilpa was always a good student since childhood. She convinced us she would be fine by herself in Mumbai… But look what has happened,” wondered Ganpat Goenka, Shilpa’s grandfather.
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1100215/jsp/frontpage/story_12107077.jsp
AuthorTopic: Bomb Blast in Pune...8 killed (Read 520 times)
July 15, 2006, 03:19:08 AM