Tragedy strikes this family twice

Twenty-seven-year-old Nandini Naik and her younger sister Rachna loved dressing well and had a cupboard packed with salwar kameez.

Today, there is no one to wear them. Less than five months after Rachna died from a fall in the house, Nandini was killed in the Borivli blast, giving the family little time to come to terms with their grief. Struggling to cope with the loss of one daughter, the family is shattered after the death of the second.

The girls'father, Ramesh Naik, sits in his home in Santa Cruz, holding Nandini’s graduation photograph and weeps all day long.

"I don't have any daughters left,"he cries. "They were both smart, intelligent girls. I wanted both of them to be well-educated. Now they are gone before I could even get them married,"he says between sobs. His wife, Vrushali, sits still and lifeless, not uttering a word.

But their anger is also palpable. "The CBI couldn't detect even one single blast. The police knew about this all along,"says an enraged Sharvari Dicholkar, Nandini's cousin.

Nandini's father was reluctant to accept the compensation given by the state. "You can't compensate for human life. Why not use all the money meant for compensation to improve the city's intelligence agency?"he says.

While mourning her death, Nandini's family will always remember her as a girl full of life with dreams of a great future. An ICICI bank employee, Nandini hoped to set up her own business someday. The family was hoping to finalise her wedding later this year.

Both girls loved wearing jewellery. When the family got the body back, there was not a single piece of jewellery on her; her chain and earrings were missing. "How could anyone steal from a dead person?"they ask in disbelief.

Immediately after news of the serial blasts reached the family, they tried frantically to call on Nandini's mobile phone, but were unable to do so with all phones jammed.

Finally, when they got through on Tuesday night, the phone was answered by the Borivli police, who said that Nandini was a victim of the blast. The family is still unsure of how she died as Nandini did not travel by first class.

Nandini's father was on a train from Goa to Mumbai at the time of the incident. He got to know of Nandini's death only when he reached home the next day. "I spent the whole night worrying about her. I thought of what had happened to Rachna and was afraid that Nandini would meet the same fate,"he cries.