“They should be in Panipat around 4 am. In fact, we expected more people from Pakistan to join them in the bus, but no one else turned up. We finally let the bus go at 7.45 pm as the nine passengers were getting restless,” said an Intelligence official.

The nine, include Sham Lal, a Hindu from Sialkot, who said he saw two of his injured relatives, Ashok and Ramesh, on a news channel. “They are undergoing treatment at Safdarjang Hospital in Delhi,” said Lal who also knew their bed numbers.

“Khuda kare vo sirf jakhmi hee ho (I hope he is only injured),” prays Mehmood Akhtar, a Lahore resident, as he walked in through the joint border checkpost to find his uncle Abdul Majid who was on the train. Mehmood said he was happy to have got the visa so quickly. “Now I only hope my uncle is safe and sound. Otherwise, what will I tell my family back home,” he wrings his hands before boarding the bus.

Like him, many others said they have been on tenterhooks since the news of the terror strike trickled in. “There is a long list of missing persons at the Lahore railway station, I am on a mission to find my wife’s relatives,” said Shahzad who was here with Asif Bhatt to find out 15 of their relatives.

Bhatt said there was a long queue of people in Pakistan who wanted to visit India for search for relatives. “Television par dekha sab kuchh, ab pata nahi kya kare, kisko mile,” said Bhatt, adding that they were told that they would be first taken to Panipat and then to Delhi.

The relatives of the tragedy-struck families said though the news was received with shock in Pakistan, there was no resentment, only remorse. “Dahashatgardo ka kaam hai, aur kya (It is an act of terrorists, what else),” said Hamir Raza.

Meanwhile, it was a tense evening for relatives who reached Panipat from Delhi to look for relatives. “Seven of us had come to Delhi from Multan to meet our cousins on February 13. We had been unable to come for the engagement of our cousin’s daughter, so we decided to pay a visit now. What did we know we would lose our loved ones here,” said Hukumuddin, a 54-year-old electrician. He is here looking for his elder brother Umruddin and nephew Yunus.

Umruddin (65) had boarded the train with his 25-year-old son Yunus and brother-in-law Kamruddin while the rest of the family decided to stay on in Delhi for a few more days for sight-seeing. “I wish they had stayed back too, and this day would have never come. Today, we identified Yunus’ body here. His father is still untraceable. I have looked everywhere, scanned all lists, called up Lahore to find out if he managed to get there somehow,” said Hukumuddin. Yunus had got engaged last November.

The only consolation for the family is that Kamruddin, a dairy owner, has survived and is now recuperating at Delhi’s Safdarjung Hospital.

When the dizzying rounds of the mortuary tire them, they dial numbers to various offices in Pakistan and Delhi for permission to take Yunus’ body home.

His mother, struck with the double tragedy of losing her husband and only son, is beyond consolation. “Her elder son Mustafa was murdered last year. Where has the goodness of the world gone?” asks Hukumuddin before dialling another number.