Pune blast victim’s body cremated in Lucknow

LUCKNOW - The body of 23-year-old Abhishek Saxena, who was killed in Saturday’s blast in Pune, was cremated here Wednesday afternoon. The event was attended by a large number of friends and family members.

A final year engineering student at the D.Y. Patil college in Pune, Abhishek was brought up by his widowed mother, who had lost her husband in 1994.

The young man’s body was received Wednesday morning by a large number of his relatives and friends, who joined his last rites at the Bhaisakund crematorium later in the day.

“Abhishek’s mother, Nidhi has been working with the Bank of Baroda after her husband passed away from cancer. She was now anxiously looking forward to her son’s completion of engineering. She could not have imagined even in her nightmares that her son would meet such a gory end,” remarked a close kin at the funeral.

According to him, Abhishek’s grandmother is yet to get over the shock and was still under a delusion that he would return home.

“Abhishek had gone to the German Bakery with a few friends on the fateful day and was seated close to the table under which the explosive device was planted. As such he suffered grievous injuries in the blast following which one of his legs was also amputated. But his condition went on deteriorating and he expired on Tuesday,” he said.

The well-known German Bakery in the fashionable Koregaon Park area of Pune was packed on the eve of Valentine’s Day when the bomb went off killing 11 people.

Nine people died the same evening and Abhishek died after 48 hours in hospital. On Wednesday, Aditya Jaiprakash Mehta, a student of Bharatiya Vidyapeeth, an engineering college, succumbed to his injuries.

At least 37 more victims are still undergoing treatment in various Pune hospitals. The bomb in a backpack — a mixture of RDX and ammonium nitrate — injured 57 people in all.