They saw their kids burn to death

A FAMILY DESTROYED: Five of Ruksana's six children were burnt to death in front of her eyes.

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New Delhi: Ruksana is a mother fast loosing her sanity and her husband Shaukat Ali’s guilt is not letting him sleep.

Five of Ruksana and Shaukat's six children were burnt to death in front of their eyes in the ill-fated Samjhauta Express. And their youngest child - one-year-old daughter, Aksa is battling for her life at the Safdarjung hospital in Delhi.

The couple's tale is perhaps the most tragic of all. Shaukat’s cousin, Jannat Ali says that Shaukat and his family of seven had come from Faisalabad to attend a wedding in the family.

The couple’s fifteen-year-old daughter, Aiyasha, he says didn't want to leave India and go back home. And it's ironic how her dead body, unlike her three brothers and a sister, lies some where in a mortuary in Panipat - unidentified and charred beyond recognisition.

Ruksana in her bouts of sanity tells Jannat that she wants her dead children buried in their ancestral village near Noida.

“She's seen her children die before her eyes. She has nothing left to live for now,” says Jannat.

Shaukat and his family were in the coach in which the blast took place on Sunday. Ruksana jumped out of the window with Aksa but the rest of the children weren't so lucky.

Forty-eight-year old Shaukat says he saw the man who planted the explosives in the bogie and is now helping the police with the investigations. Meanwhile, in his ancestral village the grief is palpable.

“Our relatives have gone to Panipat but haven't been able to identify the children,” says Shaukat's Cousin, Rehamat Khan

Shaukat’s six children weren't born in India, but he bought them to the country every year to meet the family he had left behind. But this time in their death, they have finally come home to rest.