Intern skips birthday, courts death All but one killed were 50-plus

New Delhi, Sept. 7: The name of 21-year-old Amanpreet Singh sticks out like a sore thumb on the list of dead in which the remaining 10 persons are all above 50 years of age.

It is almost as if Amanpreet was not supposed to die. His family thought so when they came looking for him at Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital two hours after the blast.

Amanpreet, who was interning at Delhi High Court, was a first-year law student at Indraprastha University. “There was a birthday party of one of his friends at his college. His friends had been insisting that he give the court a miss today. But Amanpreet was adamant. He said he had to pick up a file from court,” his uncle, Gurnaam Singh, said.

Amanpreet died on the spot. His father was a builder, but he had not wanted to take up his father’s profession.

As Amanpreet was being mourned outside the makeshift mortuary of Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, a little away a son was looking for his father.

Eight years after their case had been closed in the lower court, Harjinder Singh and his 78-year-old father Inderjeet had got a summons from the high court. They were fighting an old case with a neighbour.

All that Harjinder could remember, as he stood outside the mortuary, was the deafening noise and smoke. Seconds later, he was searching for his father among the mutilated bodies.

“I ran back to the spot where he had been standing. The place was covered with blood. There were so many people lying I was confused, but then I recognised him. I picked him up and put him in a police Gypsy. The lower part of his body was completely mutilated. I knew he was gone,” Harjinder said.

The briefcase bomb had been placed close to the queue for senior citizens near the main reception counter of Delhi High Court.

A little distance away from Amanpreet’s family, the Dabas family was huddled. The six-foot tall, athletic men had suffered a twin tragedy: Mehtab Singh Dabas, 57, was dead and his son Rohit, 20, had been seriously injured.

Mehtab’s ancestral property had recently been divided among his family and he had come to the court to fight a boundary dispute. It was the first hearing, so he wanted to make sure he reached the court on time.

Mehtab stood in the queue for senior citizens and asked Rohit to look for the shortest queue. “He was talking to his lawyer just minutes before the blast. He told his son to stand in another queue while he stood in the senior citizens’ queue,” said Mehtab’s younger brother Devinder.

While Mehtab was fighting a personal battle, 69-year-old H.D. Joshi had come for the first hearing of a PIL against the Delhi government for poor maintenance of roads. He was the patron of the Naryana Industrial Association and had a plastic goods factory.

Like the other victims, Joshi was standing in the queue for senior citizens. Soon after the blast, his family called on his mobile phone but he was not reachable. Two hours later, his friends found his body at Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital.

Another old man caught in the blast was Nizamuddin, 87. He had gone to the court for his grandson’s bail hearing. But Nizamuddin, the oldest victim, died while waiting near the high court counter.

He lived in central Delhi’s Daryaganj and was working as a munshi in a Meerut court. His daughter Mumtaz’s son, Shahnawaz, had been in jail for the last two years in an attempt-to-murder case.

“Shahnawaz’s bail application was coming up in the court, I was hoping he would be able to help,” Mumtaz said.

By noon, 11 bodies lay in the mortuary, but only four had been identified. Many families were still searching for their loved ones.

Monu and Rajni had been looking for Veer Pal Singh, their 52-year-old father, for over three hours. They had combed through the lists of injured at the hospital, searched the wards and the operation theatre. Finally, they decided to search in the mortuary. Rajni’s shrill cry a few seconds later announced her father’s body had been found.

Veer Pal used to run an optical shop in Gandhi Nagar in east Delhi. His family friend Anand Prakash’s sister was fighting a dowry case. Prakash, who was going for the hearing with his sister, asked Veer Pal to accompany him.

“He said he wanted to check on something in the court, so he came along. I was doing some paper work, when he said he would stand in the queue to get in,” Prakash said.

After the blast, Prakash fled the building without searching for Veer Pal. By the time he came back, the area had been cordoned off and the injured removed.