Dombivli reactor blast: 14 days after blast woman receives husband’s body
A DNA test of a missing person matched that of her 8-year-old son’s
3 min read
14-days after the deadly blast in a chemical company in Dombivli, Pratiksha Paudwal gets the body of her husband Vishal Paudwal after a DNA match (Express photo by Deepak Joshi)Fourteen-days after the massive blast in a chemical company in Dombivli MIDC which killed at least 10 people and injured 68, Pratiksha Paudwal, 32, on Wednesday finally received the body (Upper body and torso with lower part missing) of her husband Vishal Paudwal, 39 after the DNA sample collected from a severely charred unidentified body, recovered from the accident site, matched with her eight-year-old son’s.
On Tuesday night Pratiksha received a call from the Thane police Crime branch informing her that the DNA of an unidentified body had matched with her son’s. The policeman asked her to remain present at the Shastri Nagar hospital in Dombivli (West) to collect the same.
Pratiksha’s husband Vishal was a graphic designer by profession and was employed with a company called Cosmos, one of the eight companies around Amudan Chemical Pvt Ltd which was blown away due to the high impact of the blast on May 23.
He had joined the company just six months ago. Before that he worked in a firm in Andheri. To cut down on his commute, the Badlapur resident joined the Dombivli MIDC based company.
The body’s DNA matched with his son Yug. However, Pratiksha still hasn’t disclosed to her son about his father’s demise. “I have told him that his father has gone to Dubai for some important work. When he asked me at the hospital why his blood sample was being collected, I told him since he wished to go for police training that’s why his blood sample was collected for medical purposes,” said an emotional Pratiksha.
Pratiksha said she is also under tremendous stress over her future as Vishal was the only bread earner in the family. “We have a home loan, but it may not get waived off as EMIs were bounced during the Covid times. Besides this Vishal had also borrowed money on interest during Covid to run the family. We are very hopeful that my husband’s employer would help my family at this time,” said Pratiksha. Vishal also used to care of his mother’s medical expenses for the last five years as she suffers from cancer.
Besides Pratiksha, there are eight families still awaiting DNA reports from the Kalina Forensic Sciences Laboratory who are yet to receive their family member’s body for last rites.
Those who are still missing with their DNA reports yet to come include Sirazuddin Ahmed, 24, Dhavan Waghane, 38, Bharat Jaiswal 40, Mahesh Das, 22, Ravi Kumar, 40, Ravi Rajbhar, 30 and others. Most of them worked in Amudan Chemical Pvt Ltd.
So far only five deceased have been identified. Due to the high velocity of the blast, the bodies of the victims were badly disfigured. Police and fire personnel in their search to identify and recover the 10 bodies said that they recovered dozens of body parts from the spot.
The crime branch policeman who arrived at the civic hospital on Wednesday to hand over the body to kin of the deceased, said, “We would handover bodies to the kin as and when we get the DNA test reports.”
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