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The aftermath...
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Panipat calls Pak to hear: Yes, my father was on that train
PANIPAT, FEBRUARY 19: Nil recovery. Of the 67 bodies at the Panipat Civil Hospital morgue, 50 carried this tag. Bodies charred beyond recognition, identification has become a difficult task. Until evening, only about a dozen could be placed. As for the rest, it will take time. The local police say that from the 67, they have been able to make out 26 were men, 14 women and 13 children. Of the remaining 14, they are not sure.
At the morgue, they are leaving nothing unturned, turning out pockets, holding up every scrap of paper, photographs of children, half-burnt passports, Pakistan ID cards.
ASI Ranjit Singh came across 55-year-old Shafiq Ahmed’s ID card and a scrap of paper which had a phone number and Ghar (Home) written next to it. From this reporter’s cellphone, he dialled the number. “I am calling from Panipat. Was there anyone from your home on the train from Delhi to Lahore?” As he paused, a voice came on the line: “Yes, my father was on the train. So were my two brothers, Sami and Haris. How are they? Should I go to Lahore to fetch them? What has happened? Call my cousin in Delhi, he put them on the train.”
We called Wasim Khan, Shafiq’s nephew in Delhi. “We found Shami and Haris in serious condition at Safdarjung in Delhi. We are coming to Panipat,” he said. Two hours later, Wasim wept as he identified his uncle’s body: “My father has not been well, uncle had come to check on him. He had come to India after 18 years and we were trying to get his visa extended but it couldn’t be done. What am I to tell his sons now? He lost his wife some years ago. He was the only one working in the family.”
Just then, another policeman found a new number in another pocket. A call went out again. It’s a phone in Hyderabad, Pakistan. “Yes, my uncle Tasleem Khan was on the train. His wife Nafisa, daughter Mehreen and two sons, Sajid and Rulamin, were with him.”
They gave us a number in Hathras, UP. We dialled again to find Salim Khaled at the other end: “He was my uncle, he was visiting us. He was to return to Pakistan on January 18 but took ill. We had to extend his visa.”
Khan was a bangle trader. When Khaled showed up in the evening, he had no idea where his cousins were.
“I don’t think any of them survived. They were all sitting together. The police tell me all were in the coach whose doors wouldn’t open.”
But not all the dead were from Pakistan. A policeman found the passport of Yashmin Akhtar from Srinagar. She perhaps died of asphyxiation, not burns. On her, they found a paper which mentioned an estimate of several lakhs and a J&K phone number.
“Yes, I am Mohammad Maqbool. My wife Yashmin was on the train, I made her board it last evening. I am reaching the hospital,” he said. Once there, Maqbool broke down after identifying his wife: “My two daughters are married and live in Rawalpindi. Yashmin was visiting them. She had been going there every year. The estimate that you see is for the house she just bought for one of our daughters.”
A diary was found in a wallet from another pocket. It had a North Karachi telephone number. On the wallet, there’s an inscription: Azhar weds Uzma, 22 January 2006, a gift for you.
Another call, explaining Panipat. “My brother-in-law Syed Iqhtar Ali, his wife Ashraf, son Haftar Ali (7), daughter Mehak (3) and his brother-in-law Sayeed Azhar Ali and wife Razia were on the train. We are waiting in Lahore,” said a woman who took the call.
An hour later, Syed Iqhtar Ali’s brother-in-law in India, Navi Mohammad Khan, reached Panipat and identified him from a half-burnt pen he had gifted him before the train left Delhi. “I can’t recognise anyone else. They are not among the injured and there’s no news of them reaching Lahore. They are probably dead.” Policemen consoled him, saying don’t give up hope. “Wait till all bodies are completely identified.”
Another Indian casualty identified was 51-year-old Shakina Begum of Seelampur in Delhi, travelling to Pakistan for the first time to visit relatives. Also dead were two RPF men: ASI Kashmir Singh and Constable Rajendra Pal. As night fell, some 50 caskets reached the hospital. |
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