State bids tearful adieu to Maha-son

Four decades ago, Latur hailed Vilasrao Deshmukh as an emerging leader of the region.

On Wednesday, people of the entire district and the state bade the Union minister for science and technology a tearful farewell as his funeral procession made the last journey.

Deshmukh’s body was flown from Chennai, reaching Latur at 8.30am on Wednesday.

The 15-km journey from the airport to Babhalgaon, Deshmukh’s native village, took nearly three hours due the surging crowds that chanted slogans and threw flowers at the cortege. The police had to lathicharge the crowd at some places to control it. After the procession reached Dayanand Vidyalaya, the body was kept on the grounds to allow people to pay their last respects. 

The body in a casket was kept on the grounds of Dayanand Vidyalaya, near the family’s ancestral house, for the people to pay their last respects.

Over the next few hours, tens of thousands of people turned up, including many who were inconsolable, each one eager to get next to the body with folded hands. As the sea of people kept swelling and the presence of the country’s and state’s top political leadership, the police were deployed in large numbers to regulate the crowds.
As his three sons Amit, Dheeraj and Ritiesh jointly lit the pyre, thousands of people who had gathered broke down. Adding to the somber and gloomy mood, there was a slight drizzle.

Amid the loud chanting of ‘Vilasrao Amar Rahe’, the mortal remains of Deshmukh were consigned to flames. Prime minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi along with prominent politicians from the state and the Centre attended the last rites.

The last rites were performed with full state and military honours. Jawans of the Mechanised Infantry Regiment, which is headquartered in Ahmednagar, fired 21 rounds. The Last Post was played by the military band after the rituals.

Prime minister Manmohan Singh, Congress president Sonia Gandhi met Vilasrao’s wife Vaishali, sons Amit, Ritesh and Dheeraj. Singh and Sonia Gandhi spent some time with the family, including Vilasrao’s three daughters-in-law and his brother Diliprao.

Union ministers Sushilkumar Shinde and Sharad Pawar, Maharashtra chief minister Prithviraj Chavan and his deputy Ajit Pawar and a host of state ministers were also present at the funeral. BJP president Nitin Gadkari, MNS chief Raj Thackeray, film director Karan Johar and actor Vivek Oberoi too attended the funeral.