Death , tears and agony in Pune hospitals
Pune, Feb 14 (Inditop.com) A German man frantically hunted for his wife while a group of students from Jharkhand mourned the death of three of their colleagues as hospitals here grappled Sunday with the horror of a deadly bombing that killed nine people and injured 57 people.
The German man looked agitated as he first visited the Sassoon General Hospital, whose mortuary is holding all the nine bodies, six of whom have been identified as Indians. Three others remain unidentified. Police believe that one of them, a woman, could be a foreigner.
The German refused to speak to journalists at the hospital complex, partly because he knew only a smattering of English and partly because he was desperate to go over to other hospitals to continue his search.
One of the senior doctors, Deepa Lad, said the state-owned Sassoon Hospital received 18 injured from the German Bakery Saturday evening, of whom two were discharged quickly.
Ten people were “discharged against medical advice” — an official euphemism for those who insist on leaving hospitals although doctors feel they need further treatment.
Six patients remain, including four Indians and one man each from Nepal and Taiwan.
Six of the dead were brought to the Sassoon Hospital. The bodies of three others who died in the privately-run Inlaks Budhrani Hospital were also shifted to the Sassoon Hospital.
“There are nine bodies in the mortuary,” said Lad. “The process of identification and post-mortem is on.”
The engineering students from Jharkhand complained that they were fed up with the procedural delays at the Sassoon Hospital, where three of their colleagues lay dead. Two of them were young women.
All of them were visiting Pune, said one of the students, while declining to give his name.
“We are miserable. We never expected this to happen,” said the student, barely able to conceal his agony. “On top of this, our motorcycle too was stolen yesterday evening.”
About 50 people, mostly locals, milled in the hospital complex, some of them wanting to know if they could help. A handful of policemen were busy with hospital procedures related to the bomb attack.
The friends of a Taiwanese and a Nepalese man warded in the hospital waited anxiously for them to be discharged. Some declined to speak to the media.
Ravi Ghimghere, a Nepalese who worked at the German Bakery, said his colleague, Paras Trimank, suffered multiple injuries from flying glass splinters when the backpack holding the bomb and kept under one of the tables exploded with a deafening blast Saturday evening.
It was the worst terror attack in India after November 2008 when Pakistani terrorists who sneaked into Mumbai by the sea went on a killing spree, leaving 166 Indians and foreigners dead.
The German Bakery is hugely popular with foreigners, who visit Pune in large numbers mainly for its Osho Ashram. It also attracts a lot of young Indians on weekends.