South Asia News
One of the 100 scarred by Jaipur blasts - a girl of four (Extra)
By DPA
May 14, 2008, 14:36 GMT

New Delhi - One of the most poignant images left behind by the serial blasts in the northern Indian town of Jaipur was that of a four-year-old girl lying bandaged, on a drip, in a hospital on Wednesday waiting in vain for her mother and her aunts.

Television cameras showed the little girl over and over again to tell her tragic story, but no one told Sumana Khan that her mother Sumera, 26, was dead. So were her two young aunts, Asma, 16, and Annie, 12.

No one would tell her that her closest family members could not be at her bedside because they were busy cremating the women, three of the 63 victims of the terrorist blasts in the heart of the old city on Tuesday.

Most of the victims of India's latest terrorist attack were like Sumana and her relatives - innocent people out for a snack, for shopping or a visit to a temple on a weekday evening in one of Jaipur's busiest market areas.

Sumana came to Jaipur for her summer holidays with her mother and 6-month-old brother, IANS news agency reported.

One of the 116 injured in Tuesday's blasts in the Pink City, a popular destination for tourists round the world, Sumana now lies on a bed at the Sawai Man Singh Hospital surrounded by strangers including the media and politicians.

'We were all having something to eat when I heard a deafening sound. The next thing I knew was that I was being picked up and being taken to the hospital,' she says quite bewildered by the attention.

One of the visitors says that Sumana's father, a diamond merchant in the financial hub Mumbai, is scheduled to reach Jaipur later Wednesday.

Sumana's grandmother has taken seriously ill on hearing the news of the death of her daughters, says a relative.

As in all the bomb attacks that occur with such frightening regularity in India, many families lost more than one member on Tuesday.

'It is a crime against humanity,' an emotional Lal Krishna Advani, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader, was quoted as saying at a press briefing in Jaipur after meeting Sumana. Rajasthan is ruled by a BJP government.

Sumana's doctor Sanjeev Sharma says she has a hip dislocation which should mend soon given her age. But the loss of her mother, her aunts, the scar of the terrible Tuesday, may not heal as easily.