From Singur to jaws of death in Mumbai

SINGUR: Sixty-year-old Meera Chatterjee had gone all the way from Singur to Mumbai to be with her son who had just lost his job and was depressed. On Wednesday night, while she was waiting at CST to catch a train home, a terrorist walked up to her and shot her at point-blank range.
Meera's sons Ardhendu and Purnendu had gone out to get food for her and escaped the terrorist's bullets by minutes.They heard the gunshots and the screams but did not know that it was their mother who was killed.
When the brothers ran back to where they had left their mother, they could only find bulletmarks and bloodstains all over the place. Their search for their mother ended at a nearby hospital's morgue two hours later.
Meera and Purnendu went to Mumbai some days back when Ardhendu, who worked at a steel plant, lost his job when the factory closed down due to the global financial meltdown. Ardhendu was shattered and needed his mother's comfort. Meera responded to her son's call. She had always feared for Ardhendu's safety because of Mumbai's gory tryst with terror.
The closure of the factory helped her persuade him to give up the Mahanagri dream and return to at their village, Kismat-Apurbapur in Singur. "They helped him pack all his belongings and reached CST around 8.45 pm," said Meera's daughter Deepali Chakraborty, who was waiting eagerly for her elder brother's return.
The trio were to board Gitanjali Express early Thursday morning. "They decided to spend the night at the station," said Rupa Banerjee, Deepali's sister.
Leaving their mother in the waiting room, the two brothers went out. In minutes, gunfire erupted. Like hundreds others at the station, the two too ran for safety. They waited till the gunshots stopped. Around 10.00 pm, they returned to the waiting room to find it empty, except for pools of blood.
A little later, Deepali heard about the terrorist attack on television. She panicked and started calling up her brothers. "We tried both their numbers but couldn't reach them. We remained glued to the TV all night, waiting for any information," Deepali said.
In Mumbai, her brothers were desperately searching for their mother. "She was nowhere to be found. We asked some policemen and they bluntly told us to look for her in hospitals," Purnendu told TOI over phone.
One of their relatives Shubhajit, who stays in Mumbai, also saw the news and rushed to CST. The three then started looking for her in nearby hospitals. A couple of hours later, Ardhendu identified a bullet-ridden body lying in a morgue as his mother's.
"We could never imagine that our mother would fall victim to a terrorist attack. She went to Mumbai for just a few days and that cost her life," said Deepali.