‘How does it matter now who was responsible?’

A transistor bomb killed Sundari and her four-year-old son in east Delhi in 1985. Ravleen Kaur tracks down their family and discovers they have little hope for justice

It was twenty-one years ago. Munshi Ram’s servant found a transistor in neighbouring Yamuna Pushta and got it home. Munshi Ram’s wife Sundari switched it on. The next thing he knew Sundari, their four-year-old son Dinesh and a neighbour were dead.

Life has moved on since and so has Munshi Ram, from Gandhinagar in east Delhi to Babarbur. ‘‘Gandhinagar was very sparsely populated then. My servant Lakhan found a poythene with a transistor in it. He came back home and gave it to my wife. As soon as she switched it on, the blast happened. My son was in her lap. Another woman from the neighbourhood who was with her having tea also died,’’ says Munshi Ram, 58, who has a business of pearls in Chandni Chowk’s Dariba Kalan.

‘‘The worst part was that we were accused of making bombs by the police. Then, more blasts occurred in Gandhinagar and near ISBT. That is when the police realised that it was not our fault. Life has moved on now, I do not hold any grudge against anybody now. My eldest son was 15 then and I had two daughters. Raising them without a mother was obviously difficult but they learnt to manage,’’ says Munshi Ram.

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Son Ajay was barely five when the blast happened. ‘‘Today my kids are of that age. I do not even remember how it happened. How does it matter today who was responsible for them? We heard that five of the accused have even died, so what kind of justice do we look up for now,’’ says Ajay.

In another corner of Gandhinagar three members of a family had died in another transistor blast. ‘‘Shyamal Ghosh, a 15-year-old boy, saw a transistor and got it home to play. My father told me that there was a blast and Shyamal, his father Niranjan and his brother died on the spot. The rest of the family shifted soon after,’’ says Mitta, a vegetable seller who’s been in the area for thirty years now.

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