JOIN USVillage tries to cope with devastation
The Saturday-morning explosion at a shop in Petlawad town in Madhya Pradesh's tribal Jhabua district, which killed at least 89 people, has left behind a devastated landscape of incinerated motorcycles, cars, shattered glass and human body parts as far as 35 metres from the site.
A blue sari, hanging iron rods of an adjacent building, a demolished kitchen room and pieces of flesh, some even lying in the parking area in front of shops on the busy Thandla Road, bore testimony to the mayhem caused by the explosion of a stack of gelatin sticks, meant for mining, stored in a shop in the residential area.
Eyewitnesses said there was a small explosion before the bigger one. “We heard the first blast around 8:40 am. I thought some cylinder might have burst, and rushed to the spot,” Bhupendra Bhojnalay owner Nandlal Bagdi Ram Rathore (63) told Deccan Herald.
“I ran back to my restaurant and to my house shouting ‘Run away’,” he said.
“Even before I could enter my restaurant, I heard a huge explosion, which injured me and my 20-year-old son,” said Rathore, whose eatery is the fourth shop from where the explosion took place.
While Rathore is recovering in the general ward of Petlawad Primary Health Centre (PHC), his son Kamlesh was sent to M Y Hospital in the Indore district for further treatment.
Gulripada resident Ajay H Wasuriya (13) seems to be one of the youngest survivors of the tragedy. “I had gone there to deliver a tiffin to my elder brother. When I was waiting for him near a vegetable shop, I heard a huge explosion and collapsed. When I woke up, I found myself on a hospital bed,” said Ajay.
Pandemonium swept through Petlawad after the blasts, with people running helter-skelter. All business establishments in Petlawad remained closed on Sunday, with locals observing silence in the victims’ memory.
At least seven of those seriously injured are undergoing treatment in Indore, Ratlam and Jhabua district hospitals.
Shop owner vanishes
Meanwhile, Rajan Kumar Kaswa, whose shop was where the gelatin blasts took place, had reportedly lost his brother in a similar explosion, but continued to deal in the same items.
“Jamak Kumar Kaswa, the eldest of three brothers, had died eight years ago in a similar explosion. Despite that, there were no plans to abandon the business,” said Manish Gupta, a shop-owner in Petlawad who lost his elder brother Mukesh in Saturday's blasts.