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ShareTwelve-year-old Afroze Ansari, lying in ward 17 of JJ Hospital, does not know that he is an orphan now. His parents, Mohammad Abbas, 60, and Rakila Khatun, 55, succumbed to bullet injuries in the terror attack at CST station. Ansari sustained a bullet injury on his shoulder while his elder brother Mehboob, 15, was hit on his left thigh.
Mehboob, who was discharged from Nair Hospital on Sunday, found out about his parents only after reaching their Mumbra residence. The family was heading for Patna to celebrate Bakri Eid.
"I am waiting to meet my mother. She is unwell. That's why she has not come to see me," said Afroze. "He keeps asking for his mother and we are running out of answers," said his distraught uncle Karimuddin Ansari. In the paediatric ward, a precocious three-year-old's questions have all the adults squirming. "Why did he shoot at us?" Tejas asks, echoing the question on the minds of Mumbaikars.
Tejas' father Anand Arjunagi is in the ward below, recuperating from a bullet injury, while doctors battle to save the little kid's eyes.
"The bullet grazed close to Tejas' left eye, hitting his brow bone, and then deflected and hit Anand on the shoulder, exiting his body from the back of the shoulder," recounts Shivleela, his mother.
"Tejas is our lucky charm. He saved my life. We are praying that God saves his eyes."
Residents of Dahanu, the Arjunagis had come to CST station to board a train to Karnataka. Anand took his son for a walk around the station as the boy "loves vehicles and trains" while Shivleela was by the drinking water fountain when the terrorists started firing. "I was hiding behind a pillar and saw one of them quite clearly," she said.
