The daughter of N Ramachandran, who was among the 26 victims of the Pahalgam terror attack, told The Indian Express that as she lay numb, holding on to her father’s body, it was a panicked cry from her children that made her move away from the terrorists.
Ramachandran’s body was flown to Kochi on Wednesday night and will be cremated on Friday. He, along with his wife Sheela, daughter Arathi and two grandchildren, had reached Kashmir on Monday for a short vacation.
Arathi said they first heard a distant gunshot when scores of tourists were lounging in the area.
“Then I heard the same sound again, and saw a person firing in the air a little distance away. I realised it was a terror attack. I asked my father and children to lie down on the floor. My mother was sitting in the car downhill. We started to run away from the fenced area and found people scrambling. A gun-toting man emerged and shouted at people to lie down. He came near us and said something like a kalima (a declaration of faith). Within seconds, the terrorist gunned down my father. While I was holding on to his body, the terrorist hit my head with his gun,’’ she said.
Arathi said that while she was crying near her bleeding father, her children, both minors, yelled out, asking her to move. “It was a wake-up call. I found out that my father died and I was unable to save him. Then it was the mother inside me that guided me. Along with the children, I ran through the woods,” she said.
Speaking to The Indian Express, she pondered what would have happened if her children had not called out to her. “Maybe, I would have continued to sit crying near my father’s body…”
She recalled running through the marshy terrain of the pine forest with her children until they reached the main road. On the way, she decided she was not going to tell her mother, who was sitting in the car on the road, about her father’s death.
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“Instead of going to the car, I asked Musafir, our local driver, to come to us around 200 metres away from the car,” Arathi said. After telling Musafir that she didn’t want her mother to know what happened, he called a friend, Sameer, and both of them arranged a room for the mother at a resort.
“My mother had heard gunshots while sitting in the car. I told her that father had sustained a bullet injury and was unconscious… At the resort where mother got a room, Musafir told the staff to disconnect the TV and ensure that she does not come to know about father’s death,” Arathi said.
She said the locals helped the survivors a lot and referred to Musafir and Sameer as brothers. “While Musafir helped me go around, meet local officials and identify my father’s body at the mortuary, Sameer looked after my mother and ensured that she was taken care of,” Arathi said. “At Srinagar airport on Wednesday, I told them, ‘you are my brothers’. May Allah bless you.”
The Chief Minister’s Office said 575 tourists from Kerala were in Kashmir and that the state is taking steps to assist them.
© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
