Mumbai: For Dipak Singh Chauhan, an executive housekeeper at Leelavati Hospital, it was a nightmarish experience to see bodies being flung out from the local train compartment in which the terror blast took place in the evening peak hours near suburban Santa Cruz station on Western Railway.
Thirty-two-year-old Chauhan, who had boarded the ill-fated local train from Bandra, was standing at the exit in one of the bogies adjacent to the one in which the blast occurred.
As the explosion occurred, a cloud of smoke enveloped the area and reduced to zero visibility for a few seconds. However, Chouhan could see faintly bodies flung outside the bogie in which the explosion occurred.
He jumped out and walked up to motorman's cabin to collect first aid equipment. As he was a hospital employee, Chouhan took to applying first aid himself to the injured lying on the tracks writhing in pain.
Chouhan told a PTI correspondent that people living near the tracks were quite helpful and came running with bedsheets to carry the injured to the hospital in the absence of stretchers.
Total chaos prevailed at Santa Cruz railway station and it was a gory sight with mutilated bodies and blood splattered on the track and injured crying for help.
The best part was that people came together, carried the injured from the tracks to the road, cleared the way and took the injured to hospitals in autorickshaws.
A woman passsenger, who had alighted at Bandra from one of the trains on which a blast occurred, said a loud shattering sound was heard.
Charred bodies of three passengers were seen lying on the tracks a few yards away from the Bandra station indicating that the blast had taken place just minutes after the trains had moved out of the station.
All telephone lines including mobiles were jammed immediately after the news of the blasts was received. Volunteers from the public instantly began relief and rescueoperations. The people from the nearby areas rushed to the site and helped move the injured to the nearby hospitals.
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