Bracelet, ring helped kin identify his body: Raghavendran's neighbour

Chennai: It was 3.30 pm on Tuesday and the body of techie Ganesan Raghavendran, who lost his life in the Brussels bombing, reached his aunt’s home near Sithalapakkkam. “It was a bracelet and a ring that he wore which helped the family identify [his body]. The DNA test was necessary because the body was blown to bits,” said Margaret, a neighbour.

Uncertainty surrounding Raghavendran’s whereabouts had kept the family’s hopes alive, including those of his wife Vaishali. Family members recalled how she had been expecting to see a fit-as-a-fiddle Raghavendran come back and take her in his arms until late Monday.

Vaishali had been staying at Kovilambakkam with her parents and had only come to Sithalapakkam on Tuesday morning. “The boy had only recently left after naming their boy child in a 28th day ceremony. The child is not even 90 days old. He was to come back in May,” Margaret added.

To describe the state of mind of the family members who were close to Raghavendran as shocked would be to understate it. The aunt was as inconsolable as the grandmother. Outside, curiosity among the gathered was only increasing as they could not gauge just how much of Raghavendran they would be getting to see. “They confirmed that he was travelling in the same coach as the suicide bomber after reviewing CCTV video recording from the train. The impact blew him into bits. It is likely he is brought in a bag and nobody would be allowed to see him,” said one of them.

But when the body did arrive, it was in a wooden coffin. The father C. Ganesan, mother Annapoorani and brother Chandrasekar were mobbed by waiting family members. Chandrasekar, who is a student in Berlin, was trying hard to retain his composure but could not help fight the evidently overwhelming grief.

At 4.25 pm, after the box was placed in the hall, two men with hammers started prying away at the coffin’s nails that was holding Raghavendran’s remnants inside because family members demanded to see their son one last time.
Vaishali had yet to step out of the room that she had walked into in the morning. Grief struck on one hand and a child to nurse on the other, she was being comforted by her mother-in-law to gather courage to come see the father to her child lie lifeless, something which she could not get herself to do for a long time.
At 4.40 pm, the men managed to remove the coffin top.

The body was covered in a pearl white cloth which the family members were at a loss to remove because, of all things, they did not know on which side the Brussels authorities had placed Raghavendran’s head. His uncle Raghav, who was talking to mediapersons outside, was called back in and the cloth came off to gasps and wails from everyone in the room.

There it lay, Raghavendran Ganesan’s head, placed strategically to one side, with very little of the body beneath it. As the day wore by, political representatives from the BJP, AIADMK and other parties made a quiet visit and expressed condolences to the bereaved family.