As G Swapna Reddy commenced her last journey from Rakshapuram to the Nallavagu Smashana Vatika on Friday afternoon, a large number of people from the neighbourhood joined the procession and vented their anger against the dastardly blasts by raising slogans against ‘terrorists from Pakistan.’
The family, however, maintained a grim silence through the proceedings which were quieter than the calm at the crematorium.
Fearing trouble in the Old City during the cremation of the 30-year-old who died on the spot during the twin blasts in Dilsukhnagar, two police patrol jeeps escorted the procession while a posse of cops guarded the gates of the crematorium.
A staffer as well as student of MBA final year at the Islamia College of Engineering and Technology at Bandlaguda, Swapna worked as a clerk and warden at the girls’ hostel which doubled as her home.
“She was a very active person and got along well with faculty as well as students,” said K Srikanth, a lecturer at the college who came with other colleagues to attend the funeral. Survived by her mother, two sisters and a brother, Swapna had ventured to Dilsukhnagar to buy books for her upcoming MBA project with another student from the college. Swapna’s younger sister Archana had another loss to recount too.
“Besides my sister, it was a loss of three to four lakh rupees for us. I met her around 4. 30 pm when she stopped by my house.
She was wearing her gold ornaments including earrings, a chain, bangles and three rings. When we went to claim the body, none of the jewellery was to be found,” she said.
“The explosion took place just as she was boarding the bus at Dilsukhnagar bus stop. The back of her head and hand were badly injured. She managed to handover the phone to a bystander and asked him to call home before she fell unconscious.
The girl accompanying her also lost a limb,” said Surender Reddy, brother-in-law of Swapna.
“We came to know only at 10 pm that she was taken to Osmania General Hospital. After the call, we received no further information as to where they had taken her and found the body in the morgue of OGH. They released the body at 3 am,” said a visibly shaken sister-in-law, Anusha.
There was a grim quiet among the neighbours who had come to attend the funeral.
“She was married quite sometime back but her husband had passed away early due to some illness and she had undergone an abortion as well,” said a neighbour who had come to attend the last rites. Swapna’s family, however, claims that she was not married.