A policeman carries an injured man after the attack in Afghanistan. (Reuters)

July 7: Diplomat Vadapalli Venkateswara Rao was to arrive at hometown Rajahmundry, where his aged parents live, with his wife and children for a family gathering next month.

Instead, schoolteacher Malathi and the children, aged 12 and 15, left Delhi, where they live, for Kabul this evening to bring his body back.

Brigadier Ravi Dutt Mehta, the military attache who died with Rao in today’s Kabul car-bomb blast, however, was in the middle of a family reunion. His wife Sunita and their two children -- Flight Lieutenant Udit Mehta and Bhawiya Mehta – had recently arrived in Kabul to spend their summer vacation.

Udit, a MiG pilot posted at the Jodhpur airbase, was to fly back with his father’s body on a special IAF aircraft tonight. The plane was expected in Delhi past midnight with the injured and the bodies of the four slain Indians.

Ironically, Mehta had issued the embassy’s last security advisory, on May 27, against a possible suicide attack on “a high-profile target” in Kabul. Another embassy advisory had ominously alerted its security about “checking vehicles entering the premises of the embassy, India House and consulates”.

Mehta, an air defence artillery officer who joined the armed forces in June 1976, had been posted in Kabul last February 15. He had served for years in Jammu and Kashmir and the Northeast.

In Rajahmundry, Rao’s father V. Appalacharya, 72, recalled: “Only last Sunday, my son had told me he would be coming to Rajahmundry in August for our regular annual family reunion.”