By Marta Teixido and Shubhomoy Chatterjee
New Delhi (EFE).- The streets around the Red Fort, one of the busiest in the Indian capital, was marked by an unusual and eerie stillness on Tuesday, a day after a deadly explosion in the area left several people dead and multiple wounded, while eyewitnesses recounted the horrors of the evening before.
The endless traffic and sound of vehicles and continuous honking were replaced by the distant buzzing of ambulances, fire trucks and police cars as the entire area was shut down while the investigative agencies examined the site where a vehicle exploded Monday evening, stunning the city into silence.
The explosion was described by the authorities as high intensity and occurred around 7pm, involving a slow moving car which stopped at a traffic light near a metro station right in front of the iconic Red Fort in Delhi.
“There were lots of wounded people. There were body parts, hands, scattered around. (…) I got scared as there were cars on fire. I was overwhelmed and started crying,” Paras Gupta, an eyewitness to the explosion who works as a street artist, told EFE, recounting the horrors from the previous day.
Shops and local businesses remained closed on Tuesday while people wandered aimlessly, many still in shock, while others watched the media personnel gathered around the scene of the explosion, cordoned off by the security forces deployed in significant numbers.
Teams from the Delhi Police, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) – tasked with anti-terrorism investigations – and the National Security Guard (NSG) were present at the spot and reportedly collecting samples and reviewing footage from security cameras for clues as to the origin of the explosion.
Bhulan Chaudhary, a disabled street vendor, told EFE that he was unable to get over what he witnessed the previous evening.
“I set shop near the Red Fort. Around 7pm, a car was coming. I don’t know what exactly happened. A car blew up by itself,” Chaudhary recalled.
“A policeman came and started shouting ‘Run, run, run.’ But how will I run? I can’t even walk. Then he pushed my stall (which has a place for him to sit) to another area, but all my goods fell on the way,” he rued.
His friend Kundan, a day laborer, was on his way to look for Bhulan – as he does every day – to help him move his wheelchair at the end of the day, when the explosion caught him by surprise.
“I have not been able to eat since last night. I am having repeated nightmares. A body got blown away and landed in front of me. I have not seen anything so dreadful in my life” he said.
Kundan said that car parts from the explosion hit some people on the head, while others had their hands or back broken, and that he himself was hit on the shoulder, causing him a lot of pain.
Jai Pal, who lives near the Red Fort, told EFE he was preparing to go on a date with his girlfriend when the car exploded not very far from where he was walking. He said that despite the fear, he remained in the vicinity helping the victims.
He admitted to not being able to sleep all night and reflected on the silence and tension in the neighborhood, saying “everything has shut down. I thought of going to eat something down the road, but the road is closed. There are only officials on the road.”
Meanwhile, in one of the desolate streets near the Red Fort, a small shop selling watches was open, whose owner, Sushil Garg, explained to EFE that he had nothing else to do and quietly sneaked in and opened the store.
“The market is closed for our own sake, yesterday we heard a huge noise and people started running, we closed our stores and the police arrived,” Garg said, recalling that it had been a long time since an explosion like this had happened.
“The investigators are doing their job and we hope to be able to reopen normally tomorrow,” he added. EFE
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