Seven Bengali tourists who had come for the annual Amarnath pilgrimage in the Kashmir Himalayas returned dead to their homes while six injured pilgrims had to call off the pilgrimage and return back to their respective homes in West Bengal. The seventh Bengali tourist who died has been identified as Ashish Ghosh.
The bodies of seven Amarnath-bound pilgrims from Kolkata killed in Srinagar in hand grenade explosions on Tuesday were flown to their home state on Wednesday morning.
All the six injured Bengali pilgrim tourists were also flown to their homes in the same flight from Srinagar.
It must be mentioned that a mini-bus carrying these Amarnath-bound pilgrims was attacked by militants at the tourist hub area of Dalgate in Srinagar on Tuesday.
In all five grenade explosions that occurred in Srinagar in a span of nearly three hours, nine persons including seven pilgrim tourists from West Bengal and two labourers from Bihar were killed and 42 others wounded.
Life in Srinagar, the Kashmir capital limped back to normal on Wednesday with shops and markets open and traffic plying normally.
Extraordinary mounting of security in Srinagar on Wednesday followed the serial bombings by the militants and a meeting of the unified command headquarters is being held on Wednesday afternoon to take a fresh look at the overall security scenario.