Andhra Pradesh techie killed in Chennai blast was returning with first salary

Bengaluru/Chennai/Guntur: A software programmer with Tata Consultancy Services in Bengaluru for the last four months, Swathi Paruchuri Ramakrishnan, 24, was killed instantly when the bomb exploded in her coach just a few moments after the Bengaluru City-Guwahati Express stopped at the Chennai Central Railway Station early on Thursday morning.

An M.Tech, Swathi was travelling with a friend in the ill-fated sleeper coach, S5, of the train when the blast ripped through it. She was on her way to her hometown in Guntur, little suspecting it would be her last journey anywhere.

Having completed her graduation at the Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, she was in her first job at TCS.

While the explosion ripped through coaches S4 and S5 of the tri-weekly Guwahati-bound Express, some portions of the S3 coach also bore the impact. While Swathi was killed on the spot, 14 others were injured, two of them critically.

Swathi was to get married in two months. The eldest of the two children, she was engaged recently with her classmate and would have been married in two months, Mr Srinivasan, a relative from Chennai said. Mr Srinivasan had spent the whole day at the Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital coordinating with Swati’s parents who reached the city on Thursday evening.

“My relative from Delhi called me around 8.10 am to enquire about the blast. After a few hours only did I learn that our own child was the deceased,” Mr Srinivasan said.

Swathi’s parents Ramakrishnan and Kamakshi Devi reached Chennai by Thursday evening. “They were to pick her up from the Vijayawada railway station, but now they had to take back her body,” a relative said.

Swathi did her B.Tech and post-graduation at JNTU in Hyderabad. Her parents hailed from an agricultural background. Hospital sources said that the body was handed over to the family after post mortem. A communication from TCS spokesperson read, “We are deeply shocked and saddened at this loss of our colleague in this tragic incident. Our thoughts and prayers are with the family at this time.”

Meanwhile, in Guntur, a pall of gloom descended on Swati’s residence. Mr Ramakrishna said, “She called me saying she boarded Guwahati express and will be in Guntur city by Thursday afternoon.”

4 men with cloth bags were seen at S4, S5

The injured, including a woman, in the twin blasts that rocked the Bengaluru-Guwahati Express at the Central Railway station on Thursday, were admitted to the Rajiv Gandhi memorial government general hospital across the road.

All of them are stable, according to the doctors. They said most of the injured had pellet wounds and two suffered multiple fractures on legs.

Investigators recovered ball bearings and pellets, besides traces of ammonium nitrate, nitro toluene and sulphur from the blast sites. Preliminary investigation indicated that four men carrying two cloth bags had boarded S4 and S5 as soon as the train arrived.

“Surveillance cameras have captured the visuals of them coming out empty-handed. We strongly believe they had left those bags under the seats in the two coaches and triggered the blasts from outside. A senior police officer said three men have been held.

Tamil Nadu, Centre clash over blast probe

Politics between the Centre and the Tamil Nadu government led by J. Jayalalithaa played out hours after the blasts took place inside the Bengaluru-Guwahati Express at the busy Chennai Central railway station on Thursday, killing one person and injuring 14 others.

Ms Jayalalithaa, who had earlier stone-walled the UPA government’s ambitious National Counter Terrorism Centre, along with non-Congress chief ministers, including BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi, on Thursday kept the National Investigation Agency at bay and handed over the blast probe to the CB-CID unit of the state police.

A virtually embarrassed home ministry said that it has asked the NIA team in New Delhi to stay on hold since the state government has not yet sought an NIA probe into the incident.

Later in the day, a team of the national bomb data centre of the NSG was dispatched to the blast site for forensic examination. Incidentally, NSG’s bomb data centre is mandated by an act to collect forensic evidence of all explosions in the country.

“It seems that the state police is not treating it as a terror strike,” an official said.