Son's fever saves Odia couple, their 5 friends from terrorist attack

HAD it not been for the ill-health of 3-year-old Satvik, his parents and their five friends from Puri district would have faced the terror attack at Pahalgam's Baisaran valley.

- DIANA SAHU @ Bhubaneswar

Since Satvik was suffering from fever, his parents Swarup Jena and Puja Sundaray, and their five friends had to wrap up their visit to the Baisaran valley in 30 minutes. This turned out to be the very reason they are alive today. The Odia tourists were barely 500 metre downhill from the valley when the attacks began.

Belonging to various villages of Satyabadi block and Sakhigopal, they had travelled together to Srinagar on April 16 to spend a week at Jammu & Kashmir. Apart from Satvik and his parents, the group included sarpanch of Nuasameswarpur gram panchayat (GP) Prasanta Kumar Pani, sarpanch of Biraramachandrapur GP Barsarani Sethi and her husband Prasant Kumar Sethi, PS member of Jaypur GP Dipak Kumar Satpathy and Tofan Behera of Sriramchadrapur GP.