Youth runs with pet in tremor, falls & dies

Samrat Das

TT, Siliguri: A youth died after he fell while making a dash out of his house in Siliguri on Wednesday morning following an earthquake with the epicentre in Assam.

Samrat Das, 22, was rushing for a safer place with his pet dog when he stumbled on the ground.

When tremors had rocked north Bengal in 2011, a number of people were injured when they rushed out of buildings in panic.

The tremor on Wednesday measured around 5.5 on Richter Scale and did not cause major damage to properties in north Bengal.

Das, a BEd student, was sleeping at his two-storied house in Madhhya Shantinagar. As the tremors were felt, he woke up from the bed and rushed to the ground floor where his pet Labrador Happy stays.

"Samrat grabbed the pet and was running out of the building when he stumbled and fell on the ground in front of our house," said Usha, the bereaved mother.

She and her husband Amit Das, a retired employee of the state power department, also ran down and found Samrat lying unconscious. "Along with neighbours, we took him to a private nursing home where doctors pronounced him dead," said Usha.

Samrat is the younger son of the couple and was studying BEd at a college in Murshidabad. He had come here to write a test for a job. His elder brother works in a private company, said source.

Amit was too shocked to react. "The tremor took away my son. We hardly got a chance to provide him with treatment," he said.