BKC car crash: Injured uncle of deceased still in ICU, can hardly recognise anyone

MUMBAI: The uncle of three-year-old Swati Chaudhary, who died in a road accident on Tuesday evening in Bandra Kurla Complex, is still in the ICU

MUMBAI: The uncle of three-year-old Swati Chaudhary, who died in a road accident on Tuesday evening in Bandra Kurla Complex, is still in the ICU. He was the one on whose lap the girl was sitting in at the time of the accident. Relatives say he is conscious but has garbled speech.

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The girl had come to the city with her grandmother, her mother was in Bihar when her body was buried on Wednesday.

Swati celebrated the Holi running around the Inder Kalu Patel Chawl in Khar east, dousing everyone in her sight in gulal, wishing everyone a happy Holi. On Tuesday afternoon, the world of the family crashed after Swati was killed when a speeding car driven by a drunk 54-year-old Vishwas Attawar, a senior executive in a reputed conglomerate, crashed into their car. He was arrested on Tuesday and released on bail on Wednesday.

Swati’s uncle Om Shankar Chaudhary is in the ICU and can hardly recognise anyone around him. Her grandmother has become delusional, still believing that Swati and Om Shankar are going through life as usual. Her parents, meanwhile, have lost their appetite altogether.

While Om Shankar was undergoing treatment at a small private hospital in Kalina, he was shifted to Bandra’s Holy Family Hospital on Thursday afternoon. Swati was buried near Shivaji Park late on Wednesday, as tradition does not allow cremation of a child of her age. Some members of the family are now waiting to go back to the village to conduct remaining rituals.

“Whenever I used to go to the village, Swati would come running to me. In fact, she was a very happy and a friendly child. Looking at her all still, not speaking was the biggest shock for our family,” said Jagnarayan Chaudhary, brother of Swati’s grandfather Bindeshwar.

Family says that Chandrakala is having a hard time accepting the loss of her granddaughter. “Either she keeps crying out or imagining that Swati and Om are right around the corner. She had gladly taken the responsibility of looking after the child when she was brought to the city to enroll her in a school. We wanted her to get into a good English medium school,” said Jagnarayan. Doctors have given her some medicine to help her sleep, he added.

Meanwhile, Swati’s mother Kiran Devi, who is still at the ancestral village Chhatrapati in Madhubani distric, is unable to believe she will never hold her first-born in her arms again.

“She has been crying and slipping in and out of consciousness, not even in a position to look after her one-and-a-half-year-old younger daughter. Swati’s father Gauri Shankar has not eaten since he held the bloodied body of his daughter,” said another relative Pintu Kamat.

“As he was a contractual worker at a company, the expenses are being borne by the family. Some of the higher officials in ONGC have also personally helped out financially,” said Kamat. He also said that their family friend Vinod Yadav, who was driving the car at the time of the accident, is awaiting a CT scan as he sustained chest injury.

The Chaudhary family said they feel slighted by the fact that the person accused of bringing this gloom into their household was given a bail. “We are small people. All we can hope for is that the judiciary will mete out justice to our family,” said Bindeshwar.