NEARLY three weeks after a PhD scholar from IIT-Delhi died when an excavation pit from which she was amassing soil samples in Lothal gave approach, the BJP MLA from the area, Bhupendrasinh Chudasama, carried out a ‘shanti puja’ on the web site within the Harappan-era port city.
Chudasama, a veteran Bharatiya Janata Get together (BJP) chief and former Schooling Minister of Gujarat, was joined by celebration legislator from Dholka constituency, Kiritsinh Dabhi, together with locals from the encircling villages, together with 10 village heads from Dholka taluka, as they prayed for peace to Surabhi Verma’s soul for nearly two hours.
“The daughter that got here for an project couldn’t return and met with the unlucky incident. Being a spiritual and religious particular person, I needed the shanti yagna for peace of the departed soul. The purna ahuti within the hawan was given by everybody current there, together with the drivers, helpers, and villagers,” Chudasama instructed The Indian Categorical.
Chudasama mentioned he had organised an identical puja at an accident web site within the state round three a long time in the past. “In 1997, 11 individuals from Amreli died when a bus carrying passengers drowned in a rivulet in Lolia village…I organised an identical shanti yagna on the web site,” Chudasama mentioned.
Talking to The Indian Categorical, Verma’s father Ram Khelawan, who relies in Sitapur in Uttar Pradesh, mentioned, “The household appreciates the transfer and the intention behind the puja for my daughter.”
Verma, 26, who was pursuing her PhD at IIT Delhi’s Centre for Atmospheric Sciences, died when a trench she was working in close to the Lothal archaeological stays collapsed on her. Her Affiliate Professor Yama Dixit was pulled out of the ditch by first responders.
On Monday, the ditch, being marine clay, had grown 3-metre huge – double the scale recorded proper after the incident on November 27.
Sahdevsinh Zala, Sarpanch of Nani Boru village, who participated within the puja, mentioned that native residents are all the time obtainable to anybody who comes on the web site for any analysis. “The locals are effectively conscious in regards to the soil circumstances and the sort. We’re all the time obtainable for individuals however on this case, we weren’t conscious that the researchers had been engaged on the positioning. Then how may we now have helped them?” mentioned Zala who was among the many first responders within the incident.
MLA Dabhi mentioned the puja would ship out a constructive message to the locals. “The individuals within the space surrounding the positioning, and Lothal at massive, usually are not very educated and are superstitious. With this premature dying, there shouldn’t be any hindrance within the improvement of the world’s finest maritime museum developing in Lothal. So, this puja was carried out to ship constructive power and peace to the daughter who was pulled to the positioning by her future,” Dabhi instructed The Indian Categorical.
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