Sangamner is stunned. Just three days ago, one of its brightest boys went to Hyderabad. He returned to the village today, dead. Thousands gathered along the Pravara river for Sachin Bhawar’s funeral, but his mother Chanda was not there. After Sachin’s death was confirmed earlier in the day, she had to be hospitalised. Sachin’s father is now struggling to forgive himself for letting his son go to Hyderabad. “He kept saying the trip was compulsory. I had to let him go. Now I have lost everything,” said Dattatray Bhawar, a sugar mill worker. Sachin’s sister Prajakta, a class XII student, is speechless. Sachin was one of the seven students from the second-year electronics batch of the local Amrutvahini College of Engineering who died in the Lumbini Park blast on Saturday night. The students were watching a laser show. A group of 45 students and four professors, including 13 girl students, had gone for a three-day industrial tour of Cyberabad in the city. The college organises industrial tours to various places across the country for all years of the engineering course. “It is a part of their curriculum,” said R B Sonawane, trustee of the college. The mood at the college this morning was one of disbelief. “We were sitting in my room and packing his bag just two days ago, and now he is no more,” said Vaibhav Pisal, looking vacantly at a photo of his roommate Rupesh. Apart from Sachin, Rupesh Bhor from Junnar, Irshad Ahmed from Mumbai, Sujeet Jha from Darbhanga in Bihar, Milind Mandage from Parner in Ahmednagar, Saurabh Kumar from Lohegaon in Pune and Kiran Chaudhari from Kalyan in Mumbai died in the Lumbini Park blast. Two of their classmates — Mukund Marathe from Ghatkopar in Mumbai and Chirag Deshmukh from Akola — are fighting for their lives in Hyderabad’s Yashoda hospital. “Rupesh was always among the toppers in the class. He loved mathematics,” Vaibhav said. “He was among those who secured distinction in exams,” said their Head of Department S N Kulkarni. Pradeep Maurya recalled the last day he spent with his friends Sujeet and Kiran, helping them pack. “Sujeet was very frank in his views,” said Pradeep. “And he loved poems.”
