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Journalism of Courage
NEW DELHI, June 13: “Wake up Raje. I am here. Get up or I will get angry,” the mother of a 12-year-old boy cried as she tried to wake him up. A doctor escorted her into the police jeep to take the body for cremation. Her husband was still missing.
Harish Dang, the director of H V R Alloys ran from one end of the hospital to another. “My entire family is gone. I am finished,” he cried. His wife, three children, sister and her children had come for the movie, Border. “I am very confused. I can’t find them. I haven’t even counted who all are dead. Please help me. Please help me find my little niece Sristhi Davar,” he wept.
Screams of “Hai beta. Yeh tu nahin hai,” resonated across the corridor as an old couple walked into the hospital, not believing that their 22-year-old son was no more. His aged mother collapsed and fell into her husband M S Sehgal’s arms. “He wanted a new car and we gave it. He was a good boy. Why did he go for the movie? What will we do without him?” they cried. The wail of women and men blended with the squeaking of trolleys as body after body was wheeled into and out of the Capital’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS).
As doctors tried hard to pump oxygen into the bodies, the attendants were scampering to find beds for the injured in the Uphaar Cinema fire. The casualty and burns wards were overflowing as more and more ambulances arrived with the injured. On many beds, there were two persons.
A little distance away at the Safdarjung Hospital burns ward the relatives of 18-year-old Varsha stood weeping. “She turned 18 today. We had even kept a surprise party for her at her Madhuban home. And she shocked us with this incident. She is on oxygen just now,” her aunt Madan said even as she consoled a man whose family was missing.
And then even the mortuary could not take any more bodies. Relatives stood crying as PCR Gypsys formed a queue at AIIMS to take the bodies home for cremation. What made even doctors and police men at the AIIMS mortuary shed tears was the sight of an infant, barely two-months-old, cuddled up to his mother. Both were dead. There were hardly any burnt bodies. Not a face was charred, not a foot burnt. “Death due to asphyxia,” a doctor mumbled. A chart was put up at the hospitals to show the list of dead. Bodies kept piling up on the floor at the reception of Safdarjung’s burns ward. When doctors ran out of bedsheets, cotton pads were kept on the faces of the dead.
