NTPC blast victim skipped home visit last year to save for marriage

Phulwai has been crying incessantly ever since she heard the news of her 27-year-old son’s death in the boiler blast at NTPC plant.

Phulwai has been crying incessantly ever since she heard the news of her 27-year-old son’s death in the boiler blast at NTPC plant.

Smoke billowing out of NTPC's Unchahar Power Plant where a blast took place in a boiler, in Raebareli district on Wednesday. (PTI)

A resident of Bhadaura village in Madhya Pradesh, the mother wished her elder son Ram Ratan Patel had come home at least once last year.

“His marriage was fixed next month. May be he was saving for it. For the past one year he did not come home. I told him several times to visit us for a few days. I never knew he would leave me forever,” Phulwai said.

“We received a phone call from my son’s colleague yesterday evening. We did not know that he was dead. After travelling overnight we managed to come here only to see his lifeless body wrapped in a cloth,” said Kamlesh, the deceased’s father.

Back home, a pall of gloom has also descended on the village of his would-be daughter-in-law. “Her condition is really bad. She is inconsolable,” said Ram’s brother Naresh.

Also grieving a few yards away is Uma Devi, of Madhya Pradesh’s Rewa district.

“I spoke to him over phone on Wednesday afternoon. He was about to leave for the afternoon shift. I never thought that I was talking to him for the last time or I would have stopped him from going to work,” said an inconsolable Uma.

She married Pawan only last year and the couple was planning a family now, a relative who accompanied her said.