Front Page   

Youngest of blast victims dies

Guwahati: Five-year-old Moromi (meaning Lovely in Assamese) barely started giving her final touches to a melting pot of culture that her Hindi-speaking father Sagar Sarma and Bengali-speaking mother Sunita Sarma were giving shape to, when the Sarmas gave her an Assamese name and admitted her in an Assamese medium school 10 months back. Sarma migrated from Samastipur in Bihar and married Sunita from Golokganj in lower Assam’s Dhubri district and the couple started nurturing a dream at a rented house in the city.

The pot cracked on October 30 when a car-bomb at Ganheshguri snuffed the life out of Sarma, when the caring father, a carpenter, had come to pick Moromi up from her school. The father and daughter were proceeding to buy fish from the market across the flyover.

Sunita did not have time to mourn the demise of her husband for she desperately wanted to keep the pot from breaking down hoping to see her lovely little daughter, lying at the Guwahati Medical College and Hospital, to come round soon.

Moromi, who sustained nearly 80 per cent of burns in the blast that also separated her from father for good, lost the battle with death on Monday night.

Sunita, who works as a part-time domestic help with three families at Hengerabari, lay unconscious at the hospital when relatives took away her daughter for burial. The little girl became the 81st and the youngest victim of the October 30 serial blasts.

On Thursday, Moromi was in her school uniform when the teachers and her friends bade her goodbye and wished her a belated birthday that took place the previous day coinciding with Diwali celebration. On Monday, Moromi returned to school draped in white cloth, a scene that left the all the 15 teachers and her tiny classmates at the Dispur Government Junior Basic School, other students and their guardians shattered.

“She loved to read very much and was very inquisitive. Even at such a tender age she displayed leadership and would rush to show me as soon as she finishes writing the alphabets or the numbers…she was really a lovely girl….,” said her class teacher Nilima Kalita. She could not speak much as her voice choked and she broke down. Tears rolled down the cheeks of other teachers too, when they were awaiting arrival of Moromi’s mortal remains for a last glimpse. Everyone present there wept bitterly as the body was brought in a van.

Her classmates Kankana and Nisharani were inconsolable while her elder brother Sarat of class II, looked on helplessly looking puzzled. Sarat had his head tonsured after his father’s death. The little boy could not utter a single word but his moist eyes with a blank look asked a bigger question that no one around him had the answer— “what was the fault of my lovely little sister and our caring father?”

Stories in this Section

Banks commit to cut lending rates
Obama poised for a big win
3G spectrum auction as scheduled
Court: political will needed to check MNS violence
India’s assistance is a goodwill gesture, says Sri Lanka
Chandrayaan leaves earth’s gravity
Gambhir’s appeal rejected; Vijay in squad
Youngest of blast victims dies
‘I am sure I could end up with 500 wickets’
‘Crucial thing is to win first session’
Dalit youth killed in police firing
India for technological answer to climate change
Pragnya undergoes narco tests
Bhimsen Joshi happy
Bill Gates and Anbumani discuss health initiatives
Sensex recovers from early lows
The case of the clock heist
Indian student killed
Rashtrawadi Sena office set ablaze
45 die as bus skids off road
India, Pakistan clash on Kashmir
Hyderabadi techie found murdered in U.S.
Court put brakes on lake privatisation
RJD legislators, MPs submit resignations
Iranian Parliament impeaches Minister
Chandrayaan-1 enters lunar space
Bharat Ratna for Bhimsen Joshi
Teenage pregnancies higher in State than national average

Copyright © 2008, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu