AFTERMATH: A scene at Paharganj area on Sunday where the bomb blast took place on Saturday in New Delhi .- Photo:Anu Pushkarna

NEW DELHI: Limping back to normality, Paharganj's main bazaar -- where a powerful bomb explosion claimed several lives and left scores injured on Saturday evening -- saw a very low turnout of customers on Dhanterus festival on Sunday. However, most shops remained opened throughout the day.

Piyush Aggarwal, whose father owns a cloth outlet near the scene of the blast, said that compared to the rush on Dhanterus and Diwali in previous years, the number of customers this time had gone down phenomenally after the serial blasts. "During the festival season normally you cannot find even space to stand here," said Piyush.

All through the day, dry-fruit supplier Rajender Kumar attended to just about a dozen customers. "Yesterday, there was a heavy rush," he said, adding that the worst hit were hundreds of poor "rehriwalas" who were asked by the police to remove their rehris due to security reasons in the wake of the blast.

For Sudhir, sitting idle in his jewellery shop, it was nothing more than "time-pass" on Sunday. "Almost all the shopkeepers have suffered about 80 per cent loss compared to the business they did last year. Though people visited the market today, most were curious to see the place were the explosion took place," he said, hoping that business would improve by Diwali day.

While most shops in Paharganj main bazaar remained open since morning, those at Nehru Bazar and an adjoining lane were closed to pay homage to a shopkeeper, Mr. Sikka, who was killed in the explosion. It was around 5-25 p.m. on Saturday when Mr. Sikka went towards M.L. Jewellers to fetch water that the bomb went off.

Recalling the horrifying scene, Vinay Gupta, the owner of a cloth shop adjacent to a medical store badly damaged in the blast, said one of his customers and her two children had just stepped out of his shop when there was a powerful explosion. Within seconds he saw them lying motionless on the road.

What now remains for visitors to Chheh Tuti Chowk is a crater on the road caused by the blast outside the devastated jewellery shop, and the sombre faces of shopkeepers waiting anxiously for customers.

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