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Anjaar gives up hope of survivors

Josy Joseph in Anjaar

Surviving residents of Anjaar have given up hope for their buried relatives, thousands of whom lie under the debris of the walled city. Only hoping to give them a decent burial/funeral, the survivors search for whatever remains in the debris to rebuild their lives.

"For the past two days I have been looking for my father and brother. But I need to look after my mother, we need to eat," says Mohan Solanki as he tries to locate whatever possible from the debris, that he believes was his home once. His father and brothers are buried in the wreckage, while his mother and he survived miraculously.

The city has no final count of the death toll, but the realities of life -- food, clothing, and the need to move on -- is biting hard, as tears dry up, emotions give way to the struggle to survive. In the numbing cold of the night that they spend out in the open, Anjaars's residents admit, "We have been waiting for so long, now we have no more hope."

From 20,000 to 35,000, the death toll varies. The city stinks, and the corpses are trapped under mangled iron rods, concrete slabs, dilapidated doors and lost by-lanes.

"We have no idea how many are under the debris," says an Army captain supervising the rescue operation.

Numerous bulldozers, gas cutters, earth movers and volunteers work through the day to make way into the walled city which has completely collapsed. Bodies continue to be pulled out every hour.

Bajrang Dal activists, members of local Muslim organisations and other residents help people pull out bodies. As they carry the decomposed bodies to waiting ambulances, the Bajrang Dal activists, dressed in saffron, shout, "Bolo, Jai Bajrangbali."

Making clear that no one is alive under Anjaar's debris, the Swiss rescue team and their sniffer dogs have left town. "They left because they believe there won't be any more people alive," says a local police officer.

The exact toll in the earthquake's worst known casualty -- of hundreds of school children marching through Anjaar on Republic Day -- is not clear. Several score children are still buried under the debris in a narrow lane of the walled city.

"I think there were around 450 children and about 100 teachers," says Batakbhai Pandya, one of the few survivors from the group and principal of a local school. He continues to remain indoors, trying to forget the images of his friend dying next to him.

This is the second earthquake to hit the town in 50 years. In the 1956 quake, 120 people died and about 50 shops were destroyed. "My father lost his shop to that quake. We have given up everything once again to Anjaar," says Ahmed Khatri, eldest member of one of Anjaar's most influential business families. His family lost several shopping complexes and their old mother to the Republic Day quake.

He stands around in dirty, torn clothes as he recalls the names of friends and relatives still lying under the debris. His son Mohammed Shafiq tries to recover the cash chest from one of the family's shops. "There should be a few thousand rupees in that," he says.

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