Kolkata: A partly sliced off left thumb and a copper bracelet helped families identify two workers who died in the Taratala warehouse collapse. Their bodies were kept at SSKM Hospital’s morgue on Friday.The two workers were Suman Karmakar (37) of Shyamnagar and Swapan Mondal (56) of Jagaddal. They were brought to the hospital between Thursday night and early Friday, but remained unidentified for several hours. Their relatives later came to the morgue and identified their “partly disfigured” bodies through physical marks.Outside the morgue, Amit Sardar hoped his brother-in-law Karmakar was not among the dead. “But my prayers went in vain…we lost him,” Sardar said, breaking down in tears. “He was just 37. Who will look after his family now? What will we tell his elderly parents? We did not want him to go so far to work but we could not force him to stay put because he used to run the family, solely banking on his earning as a construction worker,” Sardar said. Karmakar’s wife was waiting outside the trauma care unit, thinking her husband was being treated there. She realised something was wrong when she saw her relatives in tears. Karmakar’s sister then told her about his death.Piu Mondal, daughter of Swapan Mondal, nearly collapsed after seeing the copper bracelet and black thread worn by her father. “I accompanied him to Jagatdal railway station and he waved at me while the train was leaving. For me it was the last glimpse of my father while he was still alive. Today we are taking back his lifeless body,” she said.Mondal’s relatives said he died on the first day he reported for work at the Taratala construction site. He had worked as a concrete-casting labourer for nearly 20 years. He had first hesitated to take up the job because of the long travel. After missing his first scheduled day, he went to the Transport Depot Road site on Wednesday morning.“Even when we saw the collapse incident on TV, it did not strike us that my father had been to the construction site. We suspected something had gone wrong when his phone was switched off at night. Then we came to the construction site to look for him. His body was recovered last night and we identified him,” his daughter added.Dharmendra Chowdhury was found comforting the family members of Karmakar and Mondal whom he knew for long. He cried, “I had told Mondal to think twice before taking up the job at Taratala. But he went to work there and met his fate.”Relatives of other injured workers are also spending sleepless nights at the hospital. Annapurna Das, wife of injured worker Debasish Das, said, “Around 4 pm on Wednesday, my husband called me and asked me to come to the hospital. He did not tell me anything else and after coming here, I discovered that he was injured. He had a lucky escape but sustained multiple injuries on his head, waist and hands.”Das, who was with her relative Rekha Yadav, said, “My mother-in-law is bedridden with kidney ailments and our family depends on his earning solely. If he cannot work anymore we will have to starve.” The last person declared dead at SSKM hospital on Friday evening has been identified as Khalique Sardar (38).
