Three days after serial blasts shook Jaipur and killed scores, the nightmare of the equally horrific 7/11 bombings returned to haunt Mumbai on Friday. Ashfaq Khan, a railway engineer who was seriously injured in the 2006 commuter train blasts and had undergone seven brain surgeries, developed fresh complications and died before he could reach a hospital, becoming the 188th victim.An electrical engineer at Churchgate, 54-year-old Khan had sustained severe head injuries and was in a coma for three months before showing some signs of improvement. The father of twin girls was partially paralysed and lost some of his memory before losing the battle for his life.In January this year, he had been operated and a plastic flap had been fixed on the right side of his badly injured skull, his 15-year-old daughter Saman said. “He was okay after the operation and was regularly taking his medicines,” she said, adding that he would get epileptic attacks sometimes. “He had an attack at 4 this morning and we were taking him to a hospital near our house but he didn’t make it. He had an appointment at Jaslok Hospital for a regular check-up today but.,” her voice trailed off. A private doctor who declared Khan dead said he suffered a cardiac arrest caused by hypertension.Khan was in the first class compartment of a Borivali local when a blast ripped through it on the evening of July 11, 2006, near the Santa Cruz station. Like many residents in the area, his wife Rubina too had donated bedsheets and water bottles to help the victims, knowing little that her husband may also have been rushed to a local hospital in one such.“He was not the same person after the blasts,” said Rubina, wiping tears off her face. “His face was badly damaged and sometimes he forgot me and the house but he never forgot the twins, Sadaf and Saman. He wanted to get them to study as much as they could.”When friends asked him how he was doing after he returned home from hospital, an amnesiac Khan would ask them to tell boss that “I am still not well”. He loved his daughters the most and would even try to help them with their studies since they were in class 10 last year, only to realise he could not.Considering that she is uneducated and her girls are only 15, Rubina says she is not sure how she can manage to fulfill her husband’s dream of ensuring they go to college and beyond.The Railways, which has paid his salary and for his treatment all along, may offer them some solace though. Satya Prakash, Divisional Railway Manager, Western Railway, said the family could apply for a job on compassionate grounds and it would be eligible according to rules. “It is quite sad. Everyone in the Railways sympathises with this family,” he said.
