Heartbreaking. "Don't call her a martyr, she wanted to live" mother of Dhaka terror victim wails at her funeral

Tulika Jain, mother of 19-year-old Tarishi Jain, who was killed in the Dhaka terror attack was inconsolable at her funeral on Monday, July 4.

"Don't call her a martyr, she wanted to live" the devastated woman wailed, her head on her daughter's casket "I wont be strong. I don't want to be strong. Why did they kill my daughter? I need a reason why she was killed. Is life so cheap?"

 At the cremation in Gurgaon, 1,800km from Gulshan in Bangladeshi's capital, the mother was beside herself with grief, speaking mostly to herself, friends and family who gathered around her. Clutching photographs of the family, Tulika called out to her husband, Sanjiv, and said:

"She was killed because she was Indian. Tell everyone the truth, the truth is that she was killed because she was an Indian. Why my Taru? She was a good girl. What did we do wrong that my Taru had to die like this?" Tulika asked. "Don't call her a martyr, she wanted to live. I was just some distance away when my Taru was being hunted down. Why didn't I do something?"

Sanjiv and Tarishi's brother Sanchit, who performed his sister's last rites around 5pm on the cremation ground at Sukhrali village in Gurgaon, tried to hold back their emotions. But Tulika was inconsolable.

"I don't know anything, why is she dead, tell me? Should she be dead? She was just at a bakery doing what teens do. She had gone to Dhaka on a holiday and she wanted to do so much good for the people there. How was she an enemy for the terrorists?" she kept asking those who surrounded her at the Gurgaon community centre where Tarishi's body was brought after being flown in from Dhaka.

Tulika, who had accompanied her daughter from Dhaka on the flight to Delhi, remained firm in the belief till the body was taken away for the funeral that the 19-year-old could be revived.

"Everything will be all right. Mamaji, you are a doctor, do something. I know medicines can perform miracles. I know she will get up, mamaji get her to me. Get her to me please," she pleaded, holding the hands of an elderly man who, too, began to cry.

Her voice hoarse from hours of crying, Tulika broke down when the time came to dress up her daughter's body.

"This is too loose, she won't like it. Get it off her. It's unsmart, she won't wear it,"

Tulika told some of her relatives who held her steady as she put a blue salwar-kurta on her daughter for the last time.

When someone handed her a bindi for Tarishi's forehead, Tulika refused, saying her daughter wouldn't put it on. She did finally relent.

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Source: Daily Sun Star India/Radio India/The Telegraph India