Wednesday, 12 November 2025
Wednesday, 12 November 2025
The blast that ripped through Delhi’s Red Fort on Monday, 10 November at 6:52 pm, claiming at least 12 lives and injuring several others, turned the gates of the mortuary at Maulana Azad Medical College campus into a scene of tragedy, chaos, anxiety, grief, and anger as families of the victims gathered in despair.
By the afternoon of the next day, the scene had grown sombre — the crowd had thinned, most families had departed, leaving behind only Mohammad Jumman’s relatives and a few reporters.
Jumman, an e-rickshaw driver in his late 30s who ferried passengers around the Chandni Chowk area, was killed in the blast.
His sister, eyes brimming with tears, approached the mortuary gate with another relative, surrounded by reporters. Gripping the iron grills, she broke down. Her family tried to comfort her.
Moments later, she turned toward the cluster of microphones, raised her voice, and asked, “If you were in my place what would you have done? Would you have stood in front of the media and got your photos clicked?”
She then lashed out at the reporters, demanding answers — from them and from the authorities — and recounted finding her brother’s dismembered body at the mortuary.
“He lost the upper part of his head, and his limbs,” she said, adding that his wife identified him through his blue shirt and jacket.
It had been a harrowing night for Jumman’s family as they searched for him.
His uncle Mohammad Idris said they had tracked the GPS of his e-rickshaw to the Red Fort area after he failed to return home. Police directed them to check Jai Prakash Narayan Hospital.
“They showed us four bodies, which we couldn’t recognise,” he told PTI. Just as the family was about to file a missing person report at Shastri Park police station, they received a call that shattered their world.
According to his family, Jumman was the sole breadwinner for a family of five — his differently-abled wife and three sons — and he also supported his sister and her children with his earnings.
It was a sleepless night for the family of 22-year-old Pankaj Sahni.
His father, Ram Balak Sahni, first saw news of the blast on television around 9:30 pm and began calling his son, an Uber driver who had left home at 5:30pm to drop a neighbour off at a market near the Red Fort.
His calls went unanswered. The family rushed to the blast site but couldn’t find him amid the chaos. When they tried to lodge a missing complaint at the Kotwali police station, they were told to return the next morning.
They kept searching through the night until a call from the police came, asking what Pankaj had been wearing.
“A shirt and blue jeans,” he told them. The family was called to the LNJP hospital, where they hoped they would be taken to the injured ward. “But instead they took us to the place where bodies were kept. One of my relatives went inside and identified Pankaj," said Sahni.
"He drove a taxi for three years. We were told the backside of his head was blown off. The car, a WagonR, was completely damaged," Ramdev Sahni, a relative, told PTI while waiting outside the mortuary.
Originally from Samastipur in Bihar, Pankaj Sahni completed his schooling before joining Meesho. After being laid off, he took up driving a cab to support his family as their sole breadwinner. He is survived by two sisters and a younger brother whom he supported.
Like Jumman, 32-year-old Mohsin, also drove an e-rickshaw ferrying passengers in the Chandni Chowk area. He had moved from Meerut to Delhi two years ago to earn a living.
Another victim, 32-year-old Dinesh Mishra from Ganeshpur village in Shravasti, Uttar Pradesh, had been working at a printing press in Delhi’s Chawri Bazaar for more than a decade. He was the sole breadwinner for his family of five — his wife and three children.
His father, Bhure Mishra, told PTI, “He was a hardworking man. He wanted to give his children a good education. We still can't believe he is gone.”
Dinesh had last visited his village during Diwali.
Ashok Kumar, 34, a resident of Amroha, worked as a conductor with the Delhi Transport Corporation, while his friend Lokesh Agarwal ran a fertiliser shop in Hasanpur.
Agarwal had travelled to Delhi to visit an ailing relative at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital. Kumar went to meet him on his motorcycle when the blast killed them both. Kumar was the sole breadwinner for his family, supporting his wife, parents, and two daughters.
Among the victims was also 34-year-old Amar Kataria, a businessman who traded in pharmaceuticals in Chandni Chowk. His body was charred beyond recognition in the blast, and his family identified him through tattoos dedicated to his wife and parents.
Nauman Ansari became the sole breadwinner of his six-member family seven months ago after his elder brother was diagnosed with kidney failure and could no longer work. A resident of Jhinjhana town in Uttar Pradesh’s Shamli district, Ansari worked at a cosmetic store and had come to Delhi to purchase supplies for his shop.
"Nauman was killed on the spot while his cousin Aman sustained injuries and is undergoing treatment at Lok Nayak Hospital in Delhi," his uncle Furkan told PTI.
According to Delhi police, at least 12 people were killed and over 20 others were injured in the blast, which is being investigated by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) as a suspected terror attack.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah have vowed to hunt down and bring to justice everyone involved in the Delhi blast and the conspiracy behind it, though the word “terrorism” has not been officially used yet.
