Family, friends bid tearful farewell to Abhijit

Abhijit, a PhD student at the Pratt School of Engineering in USA’s Duke’s University, was the only son of Sitaram Mahato. Sitaram Mahato had retired as a BSNL Divisional Engineer. Back home in Hatgamharia, Abhijit’s mother, Rani, was inconsolable. “We were informed on telephone that Abhijit’s bullet-ridden body was found in his apartment. My first reaction was it couldn’t be true… Then I thought someone else must have died. But when Tod Laursen, under whom Abhijit was doing his PhD, rang me up to extend his condolence, we lost hope,” said Sitaram Mahato.

Just two days before death, Abhijit had called up his father. “Papa, don’t worry about anything,” he had said. Abhijit was to return home in December 2008 for his 30th birthday.“We thought after his return, we would discuss his marriage. All that is a closed chapter now,” said Saumitro.

Meanwhile, neither the Duke’s University authorities nor the Durham police have informed the family about the exact cause of Abhijit’s death. “We read in newspapers that he had been killed by a robber,” said Dhananjay Mahato, Abhijit’s grandfather. “What we don’t understand is why a student like him was killed by a thief,” he said.