Tragedy returned to Ramabai Apartments, a modest residential building at Bhayander in neighbouring Thane district, as the body of Parag Sawant, latest victim of the July 11, 2006 serial train blasts in Mumbai, was brought home for the last rites on Wednesday morning. He was cremated at the Goddev village crematorium near home.
Sawant (36), who suffered severe brain damage in the bomb explosion in his train compartment, died in P.D. Hinduja Hospital in Mumbai on Tuesday morning after being in a prolonged comatose state.
“Now who will I call Parag?” asked his distraught mother, Madhuri Sawant, who would be at his bedside every day during the years of his hospitalisation. In 2008, when he gained consciousness for a brief period, he uttered the word aai (mother in Marathi).
Sawant’s eight-year-old daughter, Prachiti, who never got the chance to interact with her father, having been born three months after the incident, paid her last respects to him. “Papa,” the little girl called out as his body was being taken to the cremation ground.
Friends and neighbours remembered Sawant as a chatty and lively person. He was working as an assistant sales manager in a company back then. He married Priti Sawant in 2001.
BJP MP Kirit Somaiya, who had taken up the cause of 7/11 victims and ensured sustained medical treatment for Sawant, attended the funeral.
Through the difficult years, Sawant’s family had been hoping for “a miracle”. But that was not to be. Sawant became the 189th victim of the serial blasts.
