The grief-stricken parents of 19-year-old Anindi and 24-year-old Ankik Dhar had to wait the entire day before they got a glimpse of their children, whose bodies were ripped apart by the powerful explosion that left nine dead and scores of others injured.

Their mother, Alpana Dhar, sobbed uncontrollably and kept calling out their names, as she waited outside the morgue of Sassoon General Hospital.

Before leaving for Pune, their father Kamalendu Dhar, who works with ONGC in Assam, said in Kolkata: “I am not in a state to say anything. I feel like committing suicide. My wife lost her mind when she heard of the tragic incident.” “I spent my entire life compromising with my needs just to shape my children’s career, but God took away everything from us,” he added.

His younger son Aishik is preparing for his Class XII Board exams, and was on his way to Pune.

Professors and friends of Anindi, who was a BA first-year student at Fergusson College, attended the funeral held at the Vaikunth crematorium.

Their common friend Suman Mondal said Ankik had come down to Pune to celebrate his sister’s recent performance in the internal examination. Ankik, an alumnus of IIT-Kharagpur, too was happy with his job in J P Morgan, Mumbai. On the fateful evening, they were joined by their common friend and Kolkata resident Shilpi Goenka for some shrewsberry biscuit at the bakery when the explosion took the lives of the three.

Back in Kolkata, gloom surrounds the house at 49/5, BB Block in Salt Lake City where the brother-sister duo grew up together. The family members and neighbours are finding it difficult to come to terms with the tragedy.

“Why did this happen to the three children? It was just six months ago when Anindi went to study commerce in Fergusson College. She had a dream,” said family friend and neighbour Kaushik Ganguly.

“In December, I met Anindi in Delhi where we spent a few days together with a number of our friends. We had a great time,” recalled Chitrangada Chakrabarty, her childhood friend. Both Anindi and Ankik did their schooling from Bhartiya Vidya Bhavan. Her friends said that Anindi was good at basketball and even represented her school at the national level.

“Ankik came here in November. Before leaving he gave me Rs 200 and said have some sweets. We were all proud of him,” said Arun Das who has been working at the Dhar household for the past 25 years.

At the Goenka residence in Lake Town, the family was in a state of complete shock. Shilpi’s father brought her body home from Pune in a Jet Airways flight around 10.10 pm.