New Delhi, Oct 29 (PTI) Sanjay Prasad broke down in tears as he pointed to a juice corner at the bustling Sarojini Nagar market where his elder brother was found dead after a bomb explosion on October 29, 2005.
Some lost a sibling, some their parents and some, like Manisha Michael, lost both.
It has been 17 years since the terror attack, but survivors and families of the deceased victims who gathered at a memorial on Saturday say that time has not been a healer and they are still living their ordeal.
Serial blasts had ripped through crowded marketplaces of Sarojini Nagar, Kalkaji, and Paharganj, leaving 67 people dead and over 225 injured in 2005 two days before Diwali when the area was teeming with shoppers.
“The day remains vivid in my mind. Barely 10 minutes before the blast, I met my brother who worked at a shop and walked past the market.
“When I heard the noise of the blast and turned around, I saw a thick blanket of smoke and stench of burning flesh,” Prasad, 34, said, as he paid homage to his elder brother at Sarojini Nagar.
Prasad lives with his parents and younger brother and is the sole earner of the family. “The absence of my elder brother is always felt in the house,” Prasad said.
Manisha Michael, who was eight years old when she lost her parents and brother in the blast, said that the trauma persist even today.
“I’ve lived with my grandparents since then. I have overcome a lot of hurdles alone and learnt to deal with everything by myself but the emotional trauma is still there,” Michael told PTI.
Jagriti Ochani, who was nine years old when she survived the bombing at Sarojini market along with her mother, said that she “feels terrified to visit crowded places”.
“The trauma of the incident was such that I had completely stopped stepping out of my house and never visited crowded places thereafter. Even now when I visit markets, I feel terrified,” Ochani said.
She lost her eight-month-old sister in the blast and suffered 45 per cent burn injuries.
“It took two plastic surgeries and several years of treatments for my injuries. Even though the injuries have healed by now, the emotional wound from the incident will always remain the same,” she said.
Michael, who now works at a pharmaceutical company, said that taking care of ailing grandparents has been challenging for her.
“My grandfather passed away last year and my grandmother cannot walk properly. Taking care of them all on my own has not been easy,” she said.
She said that getting the “ex-gratia” from the government was very difficult” as her father’s body wasn’t identified and he was declared missing.
“It took seven years and a court case to get my compensation,” she said.
In February 2017, two of the accused in the blast case – Mohd Rafiq Shah and Mohd Hussain Fazili – were acquitted by a trial court, which said the special cell of Delhi Police had “miserably failed” to prove the charges against them.
The third accused, Tariq Ahmed Dar, was awarded 10 years in jail for being a member of Lashkar-e-Tayyaba despite being absolved of the key charge of conspiring to trigger the bombings. He was later released as he had already spent over 11 years in jail. PTI ABU RT RT
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