Six Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) leaders from Tiruppur had a providential escape from the bomb blasts that rocked Colombo on April 21.
DMK’s Tiruppur urban district secretary and former Mayor K. Selvaraj and five of his party colleagues escaped one of the blasts by a few minutes.
“Rajmohan Kumar, Muruganandam, and I were supposed to go down to the restaurant on the ground floor of Kingsbury hotel to have our breakfast on Sunday. While I was ready and waiting, Kumar and Muruganandam took time,” Mr. Selvaraj recalled.
“I used the waiting time to have a view of the Colombo skyline from the seventh floor. As I stood there gazing, I heard a huge explosion. Even as I heard the explosion, I saw the swimming pool water splash till the second floor,” Mr. Selvaraj added.
"It took us a bit of time to pull ourselves back to comprehend what was happening. By then we heard the hotel room service boys shouting that it was a gas cylinder in the kitchen that exploded. The boys also told us to rush out of the rooms to the lawn. Even as we were running out, I thought that this should be more than a cylinder blast given the noise and the water splash,” the former Mayor said.
“As we exited the stairs to take a passage way, we saw blood splattered all over the floor and walls and shattered pieces of glass. As we could proceed no further, the hotel staff guided us to the exit towards the front, where we witnessed a gory scene,” Mr. Selvaraj said.
Tip-toeing their way out of the hotel, they reached the lawns, where they would wait for the next few hours.
As they waited, they began getting calls from concerned family and friends who had learnt about the blasts and were anxious to learn about their safety.
After some sort of order was restored, they got in touch with a Sri Lankan Minister and the Indian High Commission in Colombo and with the help of the Minister and the officials, they returned to the room on the seventh floor to collect their passports and bags.
“As we rushed out of the room soon after the blast, five among the six of us had passports, except perhaps Mani, a party colleague. It took him nearly 45 minutes to get to the room as he had to wade through the damaged portions of the building, shattered glass, bodies and blood,” Mr. Selvaraj says.
The six then left the Kingsbury hotel to another hotel where they got rooms only after the intervention of the Indian High Commission officials. They spent the night there and also the next day – April 22 (Monday).
The only time they went out of the hotel room was because he (Selvaraj) had required some urgent medication, the DMK leaders says and adds that on April 23. (Tuesday), they left for Colombo airport after learning that flights were on schedule.
“Though we feared every minute for our lives, we did not want to change the ticket for fear of rising the authorities suspicion.” “
“Even after boarding the aircraft, we continued to worry about our safety because the aircraft could be hijacked or bombed.”
It was only when the flight landed at the Coimbatore airport on Tuesday afternoon and they set foot on the ground, that they were assured that they were out of harm, Mr. Selvaraj adds.
The six had gone to Colombo to unwind after the election campaign. coordinating the election campaign for their ally, Communist Party of India’s candidate for Tiruppur.