Just then, another policeman found a new number in another pocket. A call went out again. It’s a phone in Hyderabad, Pakistan. “Yes, my uncle Tasleem Khan was on the train. His wife Nafisa, daughter Mehreen and two sons, Sajid and Rulamin, were with him.”

They gave us a number in Hathras, UP. We dialled again to find Salim Khaled at the other end: “He was my uncle, he was visiting us. He was to return to Pakistan on January 18 but took ill. We had to extend his visa.”

Khan was a bangle trader. When Khaled showed up in the evening, he had no idea where his cousins were.

“I don’t think any of them survived. They were all sitting together. The police tell me all were in the coach whose doors wouldn’t open.”

But not all the dead were from Pakistan. A policeman found the passport of Yashmin Akhtar from Srinagar. She perhaps died of asphyxiation, not burns. On her, they found a paper which mentioned an estimate of several lakhs and a J&K phone number.

“Yes, I am Mohammad Maqbool. My wife Yashmin was on the train, I made her board it last evening. I am reaching the hospital,” he said. Once there, Maqbool broke down after identifying his wife: “My two daughters are married and live in Rawalpindi. Yashmin was visiting them. She had been going there every year. The estimate that you see is for the house she just bought for one of our daughters.”

... contd.