A few days before Diwali in 2005, the joy of Dhanteras was shattered when three bomb blasts took place in Paharganj, Sarojini Nagar and Govindpuri, killing 67 people and injuring over 200. Twenty years later, HT traces the humanitarian consequences of those moments of terror, the families who kept vigil in the morgues, and the survivors whose lives were upended.
-Kuldeep Singh, The bus driver who saved people’s lives – and lost his sight
Had it not been for the vigilance of DTC bus driver Kuldeep Singh and bus conductor Buddha Prakash, many other people could have lost their lives on 29 October 2005. While Singh was traveling through the streets of Delhi with at least 80 passengers, Prakash raised an alarm about a suspicious bag under a seat. Singh stopped the bus and asked all the passengers to alight. “There was a bag with red, yellow and green wires in it and there was a ticking sound – like the bombs you see in Hindi films,” Singh recalled.
Even after 20 years, Singh doesn’t know what made him pick up the bomb, get out of the bus and plant it under a tree. As he was going back, it exploded. His quick thinking saved dozens of lives – but left him completely blind forever. After the blast, 33-year-old Singh was taken to AIIMS, and later to Shankara Nethralaya in Chennai and LV Prasad Eye Institute in Hyderabad. “But I couldn’t see,” said Singh, sitting at the Shahdipur bus depot, where he still works.
Two months later, his wife Nigam gave birth to a son, Deepak. “He turns 20 this year, but I have never seen my son’s face. That is my biggest regret,” Singh said. Last year, the family moved from their government quarters in Shadipur to a new house in Golden Enclave in Najafgarh. “It’s built with my hard-earned money, but I don’t know what it looks like – I touch the walls with my hands, people describe how the house looks and that’s all I know.”
His act of bravery did not go unrecognized. A month later, he received an appointment letter – a permanent DTC posting. “I resumed work as a vehicle examiner after two years but I have not been promoted since,” he said.
Sitting in the bus depot, Singh remembered the day 20 years ago as if it had happened yesterday. He said, “I left home around noon and by 2.30 I had started driving. The bus was packed, it was the festival season. Near Kalkaji, some passengers became aware of the suspicious bag… I was worried about the impact because it was a CNG bus and had eight fuel cylinders, so I took the bomb out.”
Despite the personal loss, there is pride in his voice. “If I hadn’t taken that bag out, 70-80 people on the bus, probably more in the nearby market and mosque, would have died. I can’t see the world now, but I know I helped save it that day.”
Sunita, Michael and Alvin:Diwali shopping that took away everything from a 9 year old boy
Sarojini Nagar Market, filled with Diwali shoppers, was no place for nine-year-old Manisha. Her parents, Sunita and Michael, and older brother Alvin left her at home with her grandparents and went shopping on 29 October 2005.
Then a call came from Safdarjung Hospital which shattered his world.
“I picked up that call because a nurse told me that we needed to go to the hospital immediately because there had been an explosion,” Manisha, now 29, recalled. This meant nothing to the nine-year-old girl, so she reached out to her grandparents with the news.
What awaited the family at the hospital was chaos and excruciating pain. “My grandfather could not find my mother for hours. Finally, he saw her half-burnt body,” said Manisha, who works in a BPO and takes care of her ailing grandfather at their home in east Delhi’s Dilshad Garden.
His grief-stricken grandparents hoped that with some luck, Michael and Alvin would have survived the explosion, but that was not the case. Finally, 10 days later, Alvin’s body was found in a morgue. Michael never was. “We kept searching. Every lead was disappointing. Finally, we filed a petition to declare our father dead and not missing,” he said. “It took seven years and a DNA test for me to get her death certificate 8 lakh compensation in 2020.”
Raised by her grandparents, she struggled to cope with this loss. Help came from unexpected corners – his school did not charge his tuition fees until class 12. After school, she studied hotel management in a college in Lucknow and started working in a luxury hotel in Hyderabad and then Delhi. “But the work hours were very long and by then, my grandparents needed me so I left that, came back home and started working in a BPO,” she said. His grandmother – his closest confidant, a motherly figure – died in 2022.
Every Diwali brings back horrifying memories. “This was supposed to be a simple shopping trip,” she said quietly. “Instead, it ended everything. My brother’s body came home after 10 days, and my father never came home… There’s no way out when your family disappears without even saying goodbye.”
Karan Poddar:the boy who wanted light shoes
For Diwali, seven-year-old Karan just wanted a pair of shoes that would shine with every step.
So, his father, Vinod Poddar, a senior court attendant in the Supreme Court, took him and his 12-year-old sister Deeksha to Sarojini Nagar Market on October 29, 2005. “He was very happy that day,” Vinod recalled softly, sitting near a garlanded photograph of his son.
Karan would have turned 27 today. He was one of several children who were killed in the serial blasts that occurred in Delhi that evening. Vinod has not forgotten even a minute of that day. While he was standing near a chaat and juice shop with his children, a man pointed towards a suspicious bag near a clothing shop near the chaat shop. “We saw a cooker full of wires. Before I could ask the shopkeeper to take it away from the crowd, it exploded. The man was blown to pieces. I felt immense pain. I saw my daughter – and then, everything went dark.”
Every year, he returns to Sarojini Nagar with flowers and prayers on his lips. “The memorial board with everyone’s names is there. Karan’s too. We go every year. “We can’t forget – and maybe we shouldn’t.”
Meanwhile, Vinod had to learn to walk again. He spent 25 days in the ICU, received 27 units of blood transfusion, suffered 70% burns – and his right leg was amputated. He retired as Grade-I Restorer (Librarian) in SC in June 2025. “I got the first artificial limb after the incident, but for the second, I spent 15 years going from one government department to another for compensation. In 2023, I finally got 52,000 and I changed my artificial limb… They gave us Compensation of Rs 3 lakh on Karan’s death. How can the death of a child be given such importance?” he asked.
His daughter Deeksha also got burnt and her ear was damaged. She said, “My ears still ache and I have trouble hearing. But it’s the fear that has never gone. I can’t go into a crowded market anymore. I still remember the sounds, smells and screams.” “Even a small spark at home immobilizes me. They can’t bring my brother back. But the government could at least provide jobs to families like ours.”
Raghunath Coin:In Paharganj, a son is still rebuilding his father’s lost legacy
Every year before Diwali, the Sikka family’s small cosmetic shop in Paharganj turns into a riot of colors – decorative candles and lamps in neat rows, glittering paper beams, lanterns and stars spilling from the shelves. The market was busy and so was Vijay Sikka, who ran a shop with his father at 6, Tooti Chowk, Paharganj.
At 5.38 pm, a bomb exploded in the hustle and bustle of the market, 20 feet away from his shop. Now 55-year-old Vijay recalls, “There were screams everywhere. I turned and saw a woman lying on my father’s chair. Her body below the waist had disappeared.”
At that time he did not even realize that his father Raghunath Sikka was lying at a distance, hit by shrapnel. “While helping others, a local tailor told me that my father was lying injured near a police post. I reached there. When we took him to Lady Hardinge Medical College he was still breathing, but he died during treatment.”
Police later said the bomb had been hidden in a bag on a rickshaw outside a nearby jewelery shop – it was the first of three blasts to occur in Delhi that evening.
Vijay said, this was the beginning of his family’s ordeal. “In the days that followed, politicians and officials visited our home. Some promised aid, some compensated for business losses, and some offered government jobs for family members. But all we got was 7 lakh… After some time, all of them stopped answering my calls,” Vijay said.
It took him two years to rebuild the shop his father had set up in the market in 1960 after coming to India from Pakistan after Partition.
The entire shop was destroyed in the blast. Vijay was still new in the business. He said, “My father took over everything. I had to start everything again.”
Even today he cannot escape that evening. “Every October 29, the sound of the explosion comes back. I can still hear the screams of people around me, and my father’s last words to me about going to the warehouse to store the stuff I bought that day,” Vijay said.
Kaushalendra Yadav:A wrong body, and a wound that never healed
Four months after the Sarojini Nagar blast, the Yadav family suffered another shock – the body they had cremated, thinking it was that of their 20-year-old son Kaushalendra, was not his. The DNA report revealed that it belonged to another victim, Salim Ahmed Ansari.
“It still bothers me that we cremated another man, while my brother was buried somewhere else,” says Surendra Yadav, now 36.
Surendra still shudders remembering those days – going from the hospital to the mortuary and the market, searching for his brother.
Police said the bomb was hidden in a bag left near a juice and chaat shop near a clothing store. A man picked it up, asking whose it was, when it exploded, killing him instantly. The explosion was so intense that nearby buildings cracked, a fire broke out and a gas cylinder exploded, deepening the carnage.
At that time, Surendra was just 15 years old, living in Delhi with Kaushalendra, who worked at a juice shop. His parents were in Darbhanga, Bihar. On 1 November 2005, HT reported how Surendra – unable to find his brother – temporarily gave up the search, and waited for his parents to return. A horrifying image of the teenager appeared in the newspaper, along with Surendra’s heartbreaking quote, “I will not see burnt corpses any more (I can’t see any more burnt bodies).”
“I met him a few minutes before the blast,” Surendra said softly. “He asked me to go back home. I had barely walked 200 meters when the bomb exploded. That was the last time I saw him.”
