Another opportunity to pretend to care...

As Shaukat Ali Rana crossed over to Pakistan on Saturday with the charred bodies of his five children killed in the Samjhauta Express terror attack, another equally poignant story of human loss surfaced. That was of Shabir Ahmed, who having left his country of birth as a young boy had desperately wanted to return.

But unknown to him destiny had granted him just a one-way ticket to India. Returning to India from Pakistan, where he had settled in 1989 as an 18-year-old, Shabir perished in the ghastly Samjhauta Express blasts along with his wife and four children. As if that was not enough of a tragedy, his brother-in-law Fakruddin, too, died with his entire family of four.

As Shabir’s brother Mohammad Javed, a resident of Gaya in Bihar, tearfully identified five of the bodies at the Civil Hospital here, he said, ‘‘Bhai jaan had come to meet us after so many years. It was such a happy occasion, especially for my mother, who was overjoyed to see her eldest son.’’