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Missing: Fathers, sons and husbands

Kumar is among the six IOC employees who are missing since the fire broke out at the oil terminal.

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Four-year-old Riya Kumar got an unexpected day off from school on Friday morning.

Happy to be at home, she played around in the open grounds, her laughter shattering the funereal calm that gripped the staff quarters of the Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) in Jaipur.
Before she left her home to play near her house, Riya had a small query for her mother: Papa kahan hai? It is a question nobody is willing to answer.

Riya’s father Ravindra Kumar, an engineer with the oil company, had left his house for his usual evening shift at the IOC terminal at Sitapura on Friday. And though most of his colleagues came back home later, Kumar didn’t.

Kumar is among the six IOC employees who are missing since an unprecedented fire broke out at the terminal in Sitapura, its flames swallowing all that came a kilometre within their radius.

The fire could not be put out even on Friday, destroying chances of the survival for those caught in the terminal.

IOC officials said they are allowing the fuel to burn under controlled conditions. When the fuel burns out completely, rescue teams would try to enter the terminal. Since the terminal has a storage capacity of more than 10 crore litre of fuel, the fire may rage for a few more days.

But Savita Saroha, who lives a few blocks away from Riya’s house, is not giving up.  On Friday evening, as a series of blasts rocked the terminal, Savita had rushed to the spot, praying for the safety of her husband SK Saroha.

As the fires leapt up, Savita dashed inside the terminal to rescue her husband. But she was blown a few feet away by another blast. Since then she has been able to do just one thing-call up desperately on her husband’s phone.

The phone doesn’t ring when she calls him. But it starts ringing when someone from outside the state calls on his number, probably because of a fault in the system. So Savita doesn't know what to do mourn her loss or live in hope. She is clinging on to the latter. “He is just missing,” she says, with a fierce glint of optimism in her eyes. The lights at of HK Hangal’s home were switched off soon after the blast. They haven't come on since.

“The family has gone to a local relative's house. All of them are searching for Hangal,” the neighbours say. A few kilometre away, in sector 7 of Pratap Nagar, two kids rush out every time a vehicle stops in front of their house. The kids are waiting for their father.  Their mother looks wistfully at the smoke emanating from the terminal. With the fire blazing and hope fading, her hour of darkness is unlikely to get over soon.  

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