Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Three fathers grieved at Government Multi Specialty Hospital,Sector 16,two for their sons and the third for his wife,all crushed by a bus near the Sector 28 petrol pump on Saturday night.
The first time he had heard about the accident near the Sector 28 petrol pump,Ashok Kumar had treated the news casually. How are we concerned, he had asked his wife. Hours later,he was weeping for his 12-year-old son,Jatin.
Yards away from the tearful Ashok Kumar,another father,Lekh Ram,sobbed loudly and wished he had managed to persuade his 20-year-old son,Mandeep,not to visit Chandigarh for an industrial project.
The third father,Ajit Singh,a commando with the Punjab Police,was consoling his two children after they lost their mother. He held back his own tears as he wiped his daughters,but he finally broke down when he saw the body of his wife Anita,28,being taken for postmortem.
Jatin was Anitas nephew,Mandeep the son of a family friend. The three were on their way to a temple in Sector 26,riding a Honda Activa scooter,when the traffic police police asked them to stop because of a procession by Sikh devotees. A racing college bus then rammed into their scooter from behind and crushed them to death. The bus sped on into the procession,leaving at least half a dozen injured.
A bus driver with the Chandigarh Transport Undertaking (CTU),Ashok Kumar had returned to his Sector 7 home around 9.30 pm,when his son,studying in Class VI,told him to wait. He told me to get ready as he wanted me to take him to the market and buy him an ice cream. Minutes later,his mother told me there had been a major accident near Sector 28, he said,ruing the casualness with which he had greeted the news.
Lekh Ram,an engineer based in Jammu,said he had kept telling his son not to visit Chandigarh As his younger daughter tried to console him,Lekh Ram said,I had told Mandeep not to come to Chandigarh. I kept telling him to remain in Hoshiarpur but he insisted that his friends are in Chandigarh. Mandeep,20,pursuing an engineering course at Hoshiarpur,had come to Chandigarh Friday for an industrial project.
H S Malik,81,has lost not only his daughter (Anita) but also his grandson (Jatin). I had given him Rs 20 to buy an ice-cream, he said. Holding back his own tears,he tried to console his two sons-in-law,Ajit Singh and Ashok Kumar.
