CHENNAI: A week after going to visit relatives in Bengaluru to spend her children’s holiday, Bhavani returned here on an ambulance late on Monday. The 37-year-old had succumbed to injuries she had sustained in an IED blast on Church Street in Bengaluru on Sunday night.
Bhavani had gone to visit her brother-in-law, Mahendran, along with her two children — Bharath Narayanan, a Class X student, and Lakshmi Devi, a Class VI student, both studying in DAV Senior Secondary School at Gopalapuram.
It was an unlucky twist of fate that held back Bhavani in Bengaluru a day more than what was planned. Suresh
Kumar, son of a brother of her husband Balan, said the family had booked return tickets on a train on Sunday evening, but had to postpone it by a day as the ticket remained in the waiting list. “Had their tickets been confirmed, I wouldn’t have lost my aunt,” lamented Suresh Kumar.
According to family members, Bhavani’s children had a narrow escape as they were a few steps away from their mother when the blast occurred.
On Sunday night, they had a family function to celebrate the birthday of Kasthuri, Bhavani’s brother-in-law Mahendran’s son-in-law, and Bhavani and children were returning from there when the blast happened. Mahendran’s son Karthik was one of the injured in the blast.
The family learnt about the incident from Mahendran’s family, said Kasthuri Raja, a relative.
Bhavani’s husband Balan, who runs a tyre business, had gone to Bengaluru to drop his family but had to return soon to take care of the business.
When Balan learnt about the incident, he rushed to Bengaluru on Sunday night in a private bus. “He said he would update us once he reached there. But within 45 minutes, we learnt that Bhavani had succumbed to her injuries,” he said.
Learning about the incident, relatives began streaming to their home at Royapettah from Sunday night. The street at Border Thottam has several relatives, all of them shocked by the unexpected turn of events when their family member became the unlikely bomb blast victim.
Balan and Bhavani were quite close, like close friends, both soft-spoken and low-profile. They had moved to the present house on rent from the house they owned on the same street, as they wanted to give their children more space for themselves, said relatives.
As they waited in the intermittent rains for the body to arrive, most of the relatives wanted to know one thing - has anyone claimed responsibility for the blast?