Family planned the vacation for months
NEW DELHI: They had been planning this vacation together over the phone for months. A trip to Central Market, Sadar Bazar for clothes and Jama Masjid for food topped the list. All of it, however, ended in a tragic accident while they were on their way home from the Delhi airport.
On Tuesday night, Azhar Abbas Zaidi (18) and his sister, Juhi Fathima (14) got dressed to receive their cousin — Ali Zaidi and aunt — Anjum Fatima, who were coming from Iran, to Meerut. Excited, they insisted that they would accompany their father, Qamar Zaidi and mother – Anjum Fathima to the airport.
They insisted that they take their cousins Sukene and Abbas Mehendi along. Qamar could not refuse. Azhar, however, had to leave behind their sibling, Mohammad Abbas (14) due to lack of space in the car.
The Innova they were returning in, however, met with an accident while they were on their way back. As they were passing by Mayur Vihar on National Highway 24 around 3.55 am going towards Ghaziabad, a dumper truck travelling on the opposite carriageway broke through the road divider and fell head-on, on the bonnet of the Innova, crushing it. The truck then turned again falling to its right, while the Innova overturned with the impact. Four members of the family along with the driver died on the spot while the guests, were critically injured.
“Abbas, who the family had left behind, was waiting for them to return when he got a call about the accident. When we were told that there was an accident, we thought that the car would have been damaged. Never in our dreams could we think that our family will be wiped out,” Kausar Abbas, a relative said.
“We are all a joint family and really love each other. We often plan vacations together and this was just one of them. Anjum Fatima is Qamar’s sister-in-law and the cousins had been planning this get-together for a while. They even planned that they will all go to pick them up from the airport. When I spoke to Fatima on Tuesday she told me how she was excited about her shopping trip to Delhi’s markets. She even asked me to accompany her to the markets and today she is in the hospital with brain injuries while we have lost half our family,” he added.
Abbas, has not yet been informed about the death of his parents and siblings. “We have just told him that there was an accident. He is under the impression that his parents are in the hospital. We do not know how to break the news to him. He is just 14-years-old,” another relative said.