'Papa aag lag gayi hai', victim's last words over phone

Amarjot Kaur

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, February 22

Rapidly spiralling up the ramp of the Government Medical College and Hospital (GMCH), Sector 32, ambulances ferrying the charred remains of Pakshi, Muskan and Riya arrived at the emergency ward’s entrance around 5 pm today. While the smell of burnt flesh pervaded the air, the sense of emergency sent the medical fraternity into a tizzy. Two guards at the hospital’s glass-door entrance allowed only those visitors who were in the possession of the gate pass; visibly more doctors rushed in.

“Oh! Where’s my dear little Muskan? Her father rang me up from Hisar. I need to go see her,” inquired Dinesh Mehta. He went in anxiously and came back a while later devastated. Teary-eyed, about half an hour after he gained composure, Dinesh said, “My niece called her father and said, ‘papa aag lag gai hai’ (papa, a fire broke out). He called me and I came straightaway from my Sector 20 residence. She’s no more. She was only 21, studying MCom at SD College here.”

As he slowly moved towards the mortuary, an old onlooker said, “Those first three bodies, stiff and blackened, were completely burnt. The other two will survive.”

A young lad in his 20s perhaps hastened towards the ward, asking the whereabouts of fire victims from the onlooker. “My cousin sister, Pakshi, a first-year student of BBA, is here. Her father called me. I am going in to see what happened,” said Raghav Sethia. He was last seen heading towards the morgue.

A final word from Harish Desai, Head of the Department of Forensic Medicine, GMCH, cleared the air about Riya, a 21 year old from Kapurthala, too. “Two girls died of respiratory distress, while one, Muskan, suffered 70 per cent burns. Two more girls are being examined and will be under observation. No major fracture has been detected so far,” he said.