JAMMU: Nobody in Saksham’s family could have predicted that Wednesday, when he and his younger brother Riksham and their mother left to go back to school in Jammu, would be their last trip together. While Riksham, 11, is fighting for his life in the district’s Government Medical College (GMC) Hospital, Saksham, 14, and his mother Ashu Devi perished after their bus fell into a 300-foot-deep gorge in Doda. Ajay Parihar, the father of the young boys and a recipient of the Sena Medal, is devastated and in shock. On Thursday, Ajay’s older brother announced that Saksham and Riksham had returned home to see his daughter get married. “After attending the wedding, they were returning to Jammu to appear for their exams,” he explained.Ajay’s brother snapped, lamenting the bad state of the roads, reckless driving that goes unchecked, and the overcrowding of cars. He said that the administration has abandoned people to die. “Had the administration fixed accountability, this accident would have not happened and we would have not lost our family members,” he stated. According to Suresh, another family relative, Ajay desired for his sons to enlist in the Army. According to the family’s relatives, Ajay wanted to give his sons the best education possible, and they were enrolled in a prestigious Jammu university. After hearing about the accident, a large crowd gathered at Ajay’s home in Kishtwar’s Beda-Bhata neighbourhood on Wednesday night. Saksham’s mother and the other 39 passengers perished when the bus they were riding in veered off the road and into the ravine. The incident on the Batote-Kishtwar national highway near Trungal-Assar resulted in twenty injuries.
