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Journalism of Courage
The group of friends hadn’t met in a while so when they did, they decided on an impromptu dinner at a restaurant in the Kalyani Nagar area of Pune. “We met in the evening and proceeded to the restaurant. It wasn’t too far. We were on our way back when the accident happened. Everything ended in the blink of an eye,” says Akib Mulla, 24, of the night that went horribly wrong.
Two of the group, Aneesh Awadhiya and his friend Ashwini Koshta, both 24, died in the early hours of Sunday when the motorbike they were on was hit by a Porsche driven by a 17-year-old in the Kalyani Nagar locality of Pune. While Ashwini died on the spot, Aneesh was shifted to a city hospital, where he died soon after.
Talking of his friend, Akib says Aneesh was simply “Sirji” for him. “We were classmates in engineering college. We were the same age, but Aneesh was way more mature,” says Akib, struggling to come to terms with the loss.
Aneesh, who hailed from Umaria district of Madhya Pradesh, graduated from DY Patil College of Engineering in Pune, before signing up for an internship at a multinational company in Pune. He had spent two months of his six-month internship. Ashwini, too, worked with the same organisation; she resigned in February.
“Aneesh did very well in college and had a brilliant future ahead of him. He was hoping to go to the US to study or work. Whenever we met, we used to talk about coding, the kind of projects we should take up,” says a friend, describing Aneesh as a “fun guy but also very respectful and polite”.
Aneesh lived in a rented house in Viman Nagar of the city with his younger brother. “Aneesh was very reserved and did not know many people here. We were his only friends in Pune,” says Akib, while talking of a trip they undertook to Mahabaleshwar last week. “Aneesh had drawn up a list of places where we were to go trekking. He is a foodie. It was almost a ritual for him to taste dal-tadka everywhere we went. It’s so hard to believe he is gone,” he says.
The same sense of disbelief fills Samarpreet Koshta, who is mourning the loss of his sister Ashwini. “She was a bright student and was enjoying her work,” says Samarpreet, as he prepares to travelled to their home in Jabalpur with her mortal remains.
(Inputs from Safrin Begum and Navya Pathak)
