Twenty-three-year-old IIT-Kharagpur alumni Ankik Dhar, employed as an analyst at JP Morgan consultancy in Mumbai, had recently purchased a flat to shift to from his rented apartment at Evershine Nagar in Malad.
To celebrate the moment with his dear ones, Dhar went to Pune to meet his 19-year-old-sister Anandiya, a student of Fergusson College.
The siblings, along with three other friends, had gathered at German Bakery on Saturday evening for a treat. However, the festivity ended in tragedy when all five were killed by an explosive that went off right under the table they had occupied.
The other three are software engineer Shilpa Goenka, 23, who was working with Nomura, a software company with an office in Powai, and software programmers Binita Gadani, 25, and P Puri Sinduri, 22, both employed as junior executives in Amdocs Software in Pune.
The bodies of Ankik and Anandi, as she was fondly called, were identified at Pune’s Sassoon General Hospital by his IIT Kharagpur classmate, Suman Mondal, who took a flight from Kolkata with Ankik’s parents to Mumbai, and then to Pune. He said that they were initially told that Ankik and Anandi had been injured in an accident, and were informed of their death only after reaching the city.
Ankik’s father, Kamalendu Dhar, who works as the chief chemist at an ONGC facility in Assam, his wife, and their 16-year-old son Oishik were shattered on learning of the deaths, and were seen being consoled by colleagues and relatives.
Gadani and Sinduri, who hails from Bangalore, were staying at the company guest house in Pune. Gadani was on a seven-day leave to spend time with her family in Mumbai, when Sinduri, who was feeling lonely, called her and insisted she come back to Pune so that they could go together for Ankik’s party, and also celebrate Valentine’s Day. Girish Gadani, Binita’s uncle, told DNA that Binita agreed, and the group decided to meet at German Bakery.
Shilpa, a childhood friend of Ankik’s, also decided to join the gang for the party. Sources told DNA that her body was ripped in two, and was identified by her uncle who had come to claim it. The body will be sent to her hometown in Kolkata after the postmortem.
