While they remain glued to television sets watching every moment of rescue operations in Mumbai over the past two days, a cloud of gloom has surrounded the employees of Gurgaon-based software solutions firm Accenture.

Every television image and gunshot heard remind them of their 26-year-old colleague Khushboo Jha who lost her fiance Malayesh Banerjee to the firing that began at Colaba on Wednesday evening. The two — both come from Bihar — were to be married on December 6 in Ranchi.

“Khushboo is a young and lovely girl and was leaving for home to be married next week,” a colleague at Accenture said on Friday. “We were all very happy for her as she was very excited but the news we got yesterday is very disturbing.”

An alumnus of IIT-Kharagpur and son of a Chemistry professor at Ranchi University, Malayesh, 27, was an employee of Mumbai-based firm Infrastructure Venture.

Khushboo’s colleagues here said they first heard that Malayesh was injured in the firing near Colaba, as he regularly frequented Cafe Mondegar — next to Leopold’s, another pub. “But later we were told that he was shot in the leg at the Taj hotel lobby,” a friend said. “He had apparently just got out of the elevator and died of excessive bleeding.”

Malayesh was admitted at JJ hospital on Peddar Road.

Khushboo had left for Mumbai on Thursday morning and is still there. She is also an IIT graduate; her father is a doctor and mother is a Patna High Court lawyer.

... contd.