New Delhi: The area near the Red Fort metro station descended in chaos after a car exploded Monday evening. Tourists were stranded in an unknown area, with little or no sense of their direction. But local rickshaw pullers and shopkeepers rose to the occasion amid panic and mayhem and transported hundreds of people to safety.
An auto driver, a shopkeeper, an employee at a street food stall became heroes in their own right, putting other people’s safety over themselves.
“When the blast happened, people started running toward the opposite side, near Chandni Chowk market. There were hundreds, even thousands,” rickshaw-puller Mohammad Jamal Jamal told ThePrint.
But he did the opposite. He ran to help. The 50-year old ferried around 60 panicked people to safety.
The 50-year-old ferried the panicked across the Chandni Chowk road, dropping them near Chandni Chowk metro, Omaxe Mall and Fatehpuri Masjid.
“Some gave money, some didn’t. Everyone was trying to save their lives, how could we ask for money?” he said. “I must have made around 15 trips in this short stretch.”
But, Jamal wasn’t the only one. Within five minutes of the explosion, shopkeepers in the market pulled down their shutters. The area was packed with tourists and local people.
Witnessing the confusion and plight of people, many shopkeepers and rickshaw-pullers, instead of running, stepped in to help. They assisted the senior citizens and children to escape to the cycle market behind the fort.
“We helped nearly a thousand people escape,” said shopkeeper Bachu Chowdhary, who saw the explosion unfold in front of his eyes.
He described the impact as “massive,” recalling how car parts, including a silencer, fell onto the road outside his shop. The public, he said, had no sense of direction in the panic. Therefore, the shopkeepers started calming the elderly and children who were crying and were anxious.
“In about 45 minutes, we managed to get thousands of people away from the area,” Chowdhary said.
‘All you can do…’
Mahendra Kumar, 58, who runs a small clothing counter nearby, said he had never witnessed anything like it in his life.
“The Red Fort area is always crowded. When the explosion happened, people just started running toward our market. And, we were already in panic because of the blast. But, within minutes, we got hold of the situation. We helped guide the tourists out, as they didn’t know where to go,” he recalled.
Kumar himself walked nearly four km on foot before finding a rickshaw.
His phone was lost in the chaos, leaving his family panicked until he returned home safely. He came back today to check the damage at his shop. The anxiety, he said, hadn’t faded.
“That sound, that smoke right in front of my eyes, I still can’t get it out of my head,” he said.
Mohammed Muzafar runs a makeshift stall selling men’s pants near Jain Mandir.
He returned this morning, hoping to check on his shop, but the area remained blocked by the police.
Muzafar said that moments after the blast, he and nearly a hundred other shopkeepers who ran roadside stalls ran to save their lives.
“The police didn’t let us go near the injured,” he said. “At that moment, all you can do is save yourself.”
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)