A “wedding bomb” that killed a newly-married software engineer and left his wife grievously wounded has shattered the peace of a small town in India. Nearly a month after the incident, the police have attained no headway. Soutik Biswas travels to the eastern nation of Orissa to piece together the story of a destroy that has riveted India.
On a bright summer afternoon on 23 February, five days after their wedding, Soumya Sekhar Sahu, a 26 -year-old software engineer, and his 22 -year-old wife Reema, were pottering around in the kitchen at his newly-built household home in Patnagarh, a drowsy , nondescript township in Orissa.
They were planning to grill eggplant and attain some lentil soup for lunch when Soumya heard the clanging of the latch of their metal gate. A delivery boy stood outside, holding a parcel responding to him.
A fraying sticker on the box said it had been is sending out SK Sharma from Raipur, some 230 km( 142 miles) away.
Reema recollects her husband opening the box in the kitchen, and determining a parcel covered in green paper with a white thread sticking out of it, while his 85 -year-old grand-aunt Jemamani Sahu came up from behind to insure what the parcel contained.
‘Surprise gift’
“This looks like a wedding endowment, ” Soumya Sekhar told his wife. “The only thing that I don’t know is the sender. I don’t know anyone in Raipur.”
As he pulled the weave, there was a twinkling of daylight and a huge detonation rocked the kitchen. The three were knocked off their feet, and collapsed on the tiled floor, hemorrhaging profusely. The explosion had rent the plaster off the ceiling, blown apart the sea purifier, sent the kitchen window flying into an adjacent field, and cracked the green painted walls.
The three writhed in pain on the blood-splattered storey. Jeemamani Sahu was on fire. “Save me. I think I am dying, ” Soumya Sekhar groaned before losing consciousness.
Image caption A video grab of the kitchen instants following the incident
That was the last time Reema heard her husband speak.
The smolders stung her face and limbs. With smoking filling her lungs, she struggled to breathe. Her eardrum had punctured, so she barely heard the hum of panicky neighbours rushing in and asking whether the cooking gas cylinder had exploded. Her eyesight was blurring as rubble clogged her eyes.
Still Reema managed to crawl to the bedroom, and pick up the phone to call her mother-in-law, school principals in a local college. She passed out before she could construct the call.
Video footage from the house minutes after the explosion displays distraught neighbours carrying away the three wounded residents in bed-sheets to a waiting ambulance. Soumya Sekhar and Jemamani Sahu, who both suffered from 90% smolders, died as they were being endeavoured to hospital. Reema is recuperating slowly in a cramped room in the ignites ward in a government hospital.
Image caption The pair got married on 18 February 