Classmates of D. Dinesh and B. Tejaswi — victims of the train mishap — at the Capital Hospital in Bhubaneswar on Thursday. Picture by Ashwinee Pati

Bhubaneswar, March 17: The atmosphere at the Capital Hospital here turned gloomy as the bodies of the two IIT students, who were run over by a train under the Satya Nagar overbridge yesterday, were handed over to their family members following post-mortem this morning.

While D. Parvati, the mother of D. Dinesh, fainted repeatedly unable to control her grief, B. Ratnakaran, the father of B. Tejaswi, who also lost her life in the tragedy, fought hard to hold back his tears.

While Tejaswi was an electrical science student at the IIT, Bhubaneswar, Dinesh was a mechanical science student. Both were studying in the first year of their four-year engineering course and hailed from Andhra Pradesh. Tejaswi was from Srikakulum district while Dinesh hailed from Hyderabad.

According to the relatives of Tejaswi, she was eldest of the two daughters of B. Ratnakaran, a conductor employed with the road transport corporation of Andhra Pradesh.

Fighting tears Ratnakaran said that he had worked hard to save money for his daughter’s IIT education.

“But I did not know my dreams would be cut short in this manner,” said the father.

The 19-year-old girl, who had finished her schooling from her hometown, completed her intermediate in Vishakhapatnam, before getting through IIT.

Tejaswi’s younger sister is an intermediate student and her mother is a teacher.

According to the IIT staff, she had performed well in her last examination and was active in extracurricular activities as well. The college authorities arranged an ambulance for taking Tejaswi’s body home.

Dinesh, was the youngest of the two children of his parents.

He had lost his father 10 years ago and his mother D. Parvati work as a clerk in the Andhra Pradesh education department. After seeing the mutilated body her son, she fainted.

According to Dinesh’s relatives, the boy was from an underprivileged background and had taken admission in the institution following a preparatory course here.

His elder brother, who is three years older than him, has been studying in a medical college in Ellore.

Although his family stays in Hyderabad, their native place is Miralguda, 200 kilometres away from the capital city of Andhra Pradesh.

After post-mortem his body was sent to his native village by an Indian airlines flight. The students were crushed to death while trying to cross the railway line under Satyanagar overbridge close to their institute.

They were run over by the Khurda- Kharagpur Express, which was rushing in from the Master Canteen Square side of the Bhubaneswar railway station.

The registrar of IIT described the deaths as unfortunate. “We have strictly instructed the students to travel by the institute’s bus instead of trying to cross the railway line to catch an autorickshaw on the other side,” he said.