Thought screaming in call was a prank, says victim’s friend
It is a phone call that will haunt her for ever.
Komal Tripathi, 19, is never too far from her phone. On Monday morning, when the first year student of business administration was waiting outside the exam centre in west Delhi’s Narela, her best friend and classmate Ritu Singh called.
All she could hear were screams and the call ended abruptly. Komal still had some last-minute reading to do and didn’t pay much attention to her friend’s “prank call”. “I could hear Ritu scream. I thought she and the other friends were playing a prank on me,” Komal said.
Ritu and six of her classmates at Delhi School of Professional Studies and Research in Rohini’s Sector 24 were on way to take their second semester exam.
Komal went back to reading and turned off the phone ringer. She didn’t want any distraction. She waited for Ritu and others but it was getting late so she headed for the hall.
As she was settling down, a classmate told her Ritu was in an accident. The Honda City Ritu and six others were in had toppled off a flyover in west Delhi’s Punjabi Bagh area, she was told. It was around 8.30am.
Komal didn’t know the severity of it and decided to take the exam. “I knew all the answers but couldn’t concentrate,” said Komal, who walked out in an hour. It was too late.
Ritu and Sanchit Chhabra died on the spot after the car broke through cement railings to fall almost 30 feet below. Rajat, who was driving the car, died later in the day.
On Tuesday, Garima, too, passed away.
Komal was to be in the car, too. Rajat was to pick her up but he took a detour after Ritu and Garima couldn’t get a cab, Komal said. She didn’t want to be late so she asked another friend for the lift, and that saved her life.
There was a missed call on Komal’s phone when she rushed out of the exam hall. It was from Pranav Malik.
“Ritu was my best friend. So is Pranav. They must have been trying to contact me for help,” Komal said. She wouldn’t know if it was Ritu or one of the people who pulled the group out from the car wreckage who called her.
But what seems certain is that one of the slum dwellers, who rushed to the crash site, made the call.