Prakash Phatak, an employee of Saraswat Bank, was working at its Worli branch on March 12, 1993. At around 2:30 pm he left to have lunch at a nearby restaurant.

When Prakash did not return till late evening, his family panicked. The next day, in the morning, a phone call came from the KEM hospital at Parel.

“My father was in that restaurant when the explosion shook the area and the slab above collapsed, smashing his head completely,” his daughter Savita recalls.

Prakash was identified from the shoes he was wearing; his one leg was shorter than the other. The body was charred beyond recognition. He was the only bread winner of the family. For his wife Ashalata, the roof had fallen upon her. She later got her husband’s job in the bank and retired three years back.

Phataks and scores of others relive the nightmare every March 12. For this day 15 years back, 257 innocent persons including Prakash and the likes of him, were killed and over 700 were maimed in a one of the worst-ever trail of terrorist bombings.

A TADA court last year convicted 100 persons for their role in the serial blasts, and sentenced 12 of them to death and 20 to life imprisonment. Ashalata says, “Had I been at his (judge’s) place, I would have hacked them (convicts) to pieces.”

For Vinayak Devrukhar (29), who runs a phone booth at Worli, it is the saddest day of life. “My elder sister and younger brother were on the bus stop at Century Bazaar that day, when the explosion took place,” he said. The sister Shashikala, 19, was to be married in an year. The charred bodies of the two were recovered from the KEM  hospital the next day.

Among the victims was Shyam Sharan Shroff, an able RBI officer, transferred from to Mumbai a few months before the blasts. In Bangalore, he had unearthed a fake currency racket, winning accolades from the then Karnataka governor.

Shroff was on a routine RBI inspection visit to Bank of Oman branch at Air India building, when an Ambassador car laden with RDX exploded in front of it. He died on the spot.

Special programmes including a candle light march, were organised on Wednesday in the metropolis to mark the anniversary of the bombings.