The Hindu : New Delhi News : No clemency but penalty, demand blast victims

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Nov 09, 2005

New Delhi

New Delhi

No clemency but penalty, demand blast victims

Staff Reporter

Memorandum submitted to President

INCONSOLABLE: The family member of a bomb blast victim breaking down at a Press conference in New Delhi on Tuesday. Photo: Anu Pushkarna

NEW DELHI: Eight-year-old Kriti, dwarfed by adults surrounding her and dazed by the constant flash of shutterbugs trying to capture her grief-stricken face, has her whole long life stretched in front of her. All alone -- with only her aging grandparents for support -- she might be too young to understand the meaning of all that she has lost in the recent Sarojini Nagar bomb blast, but she is old enough to recognise its overpowering pain.

"I think the people who did this to my mother and sister should not be spared,'' she said, sobbing at a press conference organised by the All India Anti-Terrorist Front headed by M. S. Bitta here in the Capital.

Her old grandfather, wearing thick, almost opaque, spectacle, wiped his tears. "She has no one to even give her tea in the morning when she goes to school. Her father died a few years ago. My daughter-in-law and Kriti's sister had gone to Sarojini Nagar to change a pair of slippers they bought the day before,'' said Devi Dayal, who owns a small peanut shop.

She is not alone in her misery, though. Families who have lost their loved ones in the serial blasts all came together on Tuesday to ask for the ultimate punishment for the terrorists who plunged their lives into darkness. "My daughter was to get engaged yesterday. Our house was bustling with people who had come to celebrate. But it has turned into a house of mourning. It has been 10 days since the blast, but no one has been caught,'' lamented Jai Prakash, who works in the Department of Posts.

Far from contemplating forgiveness, torn apart by the loss of a loved one, Saleena Das is inconsolable. Still unable to cope with the enormity of the tragedy, she has lost her grandson Alvin Micheal, her son Michael John is still missing and her daughter-in-law Sunita, admitted to Safdarjung Hospital, has had her leg amputated. "I just want the terrorists to suffer the way we are suffering,'' she said crying.

Sunita, who cried silently through the press conference, echoes the same sentiments. "I don't want this to happen to anyone else,'' she said having lost her daughter in the blasts.

Determined to get "justice" for their suffering, the victims of the Delhi bomb blasts as well as others who had lost their families in other terrorist attacks, met President A.P.J Abdul Kalam in the afternoon. They also submitted a memorandum appealing not to grant clemency to the "brutal terrorists for committing ghastly crime against innocent people''.

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