Amarnath yatra attack: Gujarat woman spoke to grandson 45 minutes before being shot dead

Mumbai city news: The attack claimed two lives from Valsad

The Anantnag terror attack also killed two people — Surekha Patel, 55, and Laxmiben Patel, 62 — from Valsad in Gujarat.

A group of Muslims protest at Minara Masjid in Mumbai on Tuesday against the terror attack on Amarnath devotees. (Satyabrata Tripathy/HT)

A resident of Udvada in Valsad district, Surekha had called her four-year-old grandson 45 minutes before her bus was attacked by terrorists.

“My mother had called to speak to my son Neil who wanted her to bring him a toy car,” Jigar Patel, Surekha’s son, said on Tuesday.

He added that Surekha had a religious bent of mind and loved to go on pilgrimages. She went to Rameswaram and Kanyakumari last year and was on her maiden visit to Amarnath with three friends. She had spent Rs11,000 for the bus trip that was to last 21 days.

“Her friends have survived, but my mother is dead,” bemoaned Jigar.

Laxmiben Patel, also from Valsad, had visited Amarnath 15 times previously as a cook with a tourism firm. “There was never a problem before. But her 16th trip turned out to be her last,” lamented her son Suraj.

Her family grew tense when television channels began breaking news of the attack. “We were shocked when we found out the bus number plate,” he added. Laxmiben’s body has been kept at Valsad’s Kasturba hospital after being flown in from Kashmir.

The family is waiting for the arrival of her daughter Bharti from Anand to conduct the funeral.