Kolkata: Sabita Kamila (65) from West Bengal’s Gosaba town set out on a spiritual trip to Puri for Rath Yatra with a group of 12 people, including her daughter’s family of five, with no inkling how her trip would quickly turn into a nightmare.“We reached Grand Road around 3.30 pm on Thursday amid a huge sea of devotees. After waiting for around 90 minutes, the moment came when the chariots would start rolling with the pulling of ropes attached to them. As the yatra started, the crowd surged, and suddenly there was chaos all around,” recalled Dhiman Mondal, her son-in-law.With people jostling for space amid rain, several started falling on each other in the melee, Kamila said, before her group got separated from each other.“Not knowing my way around, I spent the night under the sky, with just a polythene sheet as cover from the rain,” Kamila, who is partially visually impaired, later told Mondal.Empty stomach since Thursday afternoon, Kamila told her family that she had to borrow Rs 10 from a sadhu to have some food on Friday morning.Mondal’s friend Manoj Chatterjee, a resident of Hooghly district in West Bengal, said he was with the Mondal family at the time of the chaos. “We were all feeling uneasy and breathless. Another colleague of mine tried to rescue me, but I got swept away and fell on a few people who might have already fallen,” recalled Chatterjee.“A youth helped me get up, and in turn, I helped a woman who was complaining of asphyxia. We went to a first-aid camp. After resting and having water, I got out and found Mondal’s father,” said Chatterjee.Till late in the night and throughout the next morning, Mondal went to four police stations, including the Town police station, scanned local hospitals, railway station and had almost given up hope of seeing Sabita again.After almost 20 hours of frantic search, Mondal found his mother-in-law sitting dishevelled in a corner near Jagannath Temple.“Her face was swollen on the right side, left leg fractured, and blood splattered on her body and clothes. We took her to the hospital, where she received primary treatment,” said Mondal.As luck would have it, Mondal’s mother also went missing briefly. As Mondal was frantically looking for his family and friends, he got a call around 8.30 pm from a local hospital, saying that his mother was brought there after she complained of asphyxia and had fallen unconscious.“I rushed to the hospital, from where she was released after primary treatment. But she has been complaining of chest pain. I’m taking her to a local doctor,” Mondal told TOI over phone on Friday.
