Around 6.50 pm, I had just come out of the Gauri Shankar temple in Chandni Chown and crossed the road towards the Red Fort. Then I heard a huge explosion. It was like a ball of fire rising upwards. It was nothing like I had ever seen or heard before.

A car had exploded in the middle of the traffic and it consumed several other cars around it. For a moment, I did not know what to do. I shot a short video but realised that anything could happen next. The vehicle next to me could explode too. So I ran away as far as I could.

I saw about 30 to 35 people being thrown off their feet because of the explosion. They lay scattered all around the exploded car. Human parts had splattered and a human head fell in front of me.

The police arrived about ten minutes later at 7 pm. At 7.15 pm, the ambulances showed up. But by then, a lot of local people helped the injured by putting them into e-rickshaws and rushing to local hospitals.

I’m 27 years old and I live in Loni in Ghaziabad. I work at an insurance firm in Daryaganj and I had stopped at the temple after work to pray.

It’s the first time in my life that I have seen death this up and close. I will never be able to forget it.

It reminded me of the bomb blasts that occurred in Delhi about 20 years ago. I was in school then and my father would tell us scary stories of those times.

Today, my father has been calling me incessantly after the explosion. I have stayed back here for four hours because I had parked my bike near the Red Fort but the police have cordoned off that area and aren’t letting me get to my bike.

But my father insists that I return home without the vehicle. “You can come back tomorrow and bring it back,” he says. I will take the metro. It’s possible that he will never let me come to the temple to pray again.

There were so many journalists at the site just after the blast. I was reluctant to speak with them because it’s a risk. I did not even want a photograph taken.

One tends to be critical of the government in any interview you give in these moments. But this government has a problem. If you say something critical about them to TV news channels, you don’t know what might happen to you next.

I saw [Union Home Minister] Amit Shah when he was here to inspect the blast site. All this is politics. What has happened has happened. Ordinary people have died and their loved ones will never see them again. His visit makes no difference.

As told to Ayush Tiwari.

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