Among Moti Nagar victims: A 6-yr-old, a man about to get married, new workers

On Friday, Hanshu’s mother Anju continued to battle for her life, her young daughter praying by her side in the intensive care unit (ICU) of Acharya Shree Bhikshu Hospital in Moti Nagar.

It was not every day that six-year-old Hanshu would accompany his parents to the Moti Nagar factory where the couple worked. He would go to school with his sister while his parents toiled.

Family members of the people who died in a building collapse in Sudarshan Park of Moti Nagar area due to an explosion in a factory mourns at Acharya Bhikshu Hospital in New Delhi, India, on Friday (Sanchit Khanna/HT PHOTO)

But as fate would have it, the girl had to attend tuitions on Thursday evening, because of which Hanshu’s parents had to tag him along to work.

Hanshu and his 40-year-old father Rajesh were among the seven killed when an explosion caused the building to collapse on Thursday, about 90 minutes before the family would have returned to the safety of their homes.

On Friday, Hanshu’s mother Anju continued to battle for her life, her young daughter praying by her side in the intensive care unit (ICU) of Acharya Shree Bhikshu Hospital in Moti Nagar.

The other dead included a 21-year-old young man, Ajay Kumar, who had been engaged to a woman just a fortnight ago, and a 23-year-old man, also named Ajay Kumar, who had begun working at the factory only on Wednesday and had planned to visit Vaishno Devi temple with his friends on Saturday.

The post-mortem of two bodies was conducted on Friday while the autopsies of the other dead people would be performed on Saturday after their relatives arrive.

While six of the dead were identified by Friday morning, the seventh victim’s identity was ascertained nearly 17 hours after the mishap. That victim, 18-year-old Sanjay Prasad, had been working with his older brother Gangesh at the factory for the last two months.

The siblings were buried under the rubble but Gangesh was lucky to be rescued alive. “Gangesh and I were unable to find Sanjay anywhere. We thought he had escaped alive,” said the siblings’ uncle, Mahender Prasad.

Mahender said he and his friends searched for Sanjay at the mishap site and at four hospitals but in vain. Mahender sought police’s help in the afternoon after which he was shown the photos of the dead. Sanjay was one among them.

“I don’t know how to break the news to Gangesh. He is so hopeful about his brother,” said Mahender at the DDU Hospital’s mortuary.

Similar was the predicament of Ajay’s brother, Rohit. “Ajay was engaged on December 18 and was to be married in May. His fiancee is studying and Ajay too had taken up a correspondence course a year ago. He wanted a more respectable job after marriage. I don’t have the courage to break the news to Ajay’s fiancée,” Rohit said.