Ashok Bapat was meant to retire from the National Textile Corporation (NTC) as General Manager in August 2003. However, NTC had tremendous use for a man who had been working since the mid-1990s on the loss-making PSU’s turnaround plan of raising funds from the sale of its defunct land in Mumbai. So, Bapat took up NTC’s offer of superannuation.

Accustomed to working late evenings at the NTC headquarters at Ballard Estate, Bapat along with his colleague headed home earlier than usual on 11/7, after attending a meeting in Parel. Both died in the 6.25 pm train blast at Jogeshwari, 2 stops before Bapat was slated to alight.

His mobile phone was never traced, and Bapat’s family could trace his body at the city’s Cooper Hospital only the following morning after tortuous rounds of various hospitals.

Three weeks on, at his flat in Goregaon, wife and college lecturer Anjali (51) is still too shocked to speak. The couple of 35 years came to Mumbai in 1971 when Bapat joined government service as a civil engineer with the Public Works Department.

He moved to NTC in 1981 and that is where he found his calling. Says son Avinash, “The years running up to retirement were especially crucial since my father was very involved with the company’s revival proposal and how the land in Mumbai could help raise money for the company.”

NTC’s Managing Director in Delhi, Ramchandra Pillai, remembers Bapat’s “commitment and encyclopaedic knowledge. In the past year, as Mumbai’s mill land was subjected to PILs in the High Court and Supreme Court, Bapat, with his knowledge and background, became the pillar of our legal effort.”

... contd.