After a being comatose and in a vegetative state for seven years, Amit Singh died last evening. He died on May 2, but terrorists had taken his life that July evening when the bomb they had planted on the local train he was travelling on inflicted such severe head injuries that he could never speak, walk, eat, laugh again.

The seven bomb blasts across Mumbai on July 11, 2006 killed 210 people.

Amit Singh was only 20 when terrorists struck. Our thoughts go out to his family and republish an article on his and his family’s brave and dignified struggle.

Rest in Peace, Dear Amit.

On a beautiful Mumbai evening, Amit Singh sits facing the large window, with the wind in his face. The rains have healed the scars left by a harsh summer but down this corridor hangs a white, impersonal board that tells us that Amit's healing is yet to come.

Amit is 21, the youngest patient in the high dependency unit at the Jaslok Hospital. The other patient closest to him in age is in his 40s. The remaining are in their 70s and 80s but Amit doesn't know any of them.

He doesn't know he has been here at the hospital for a year and that his last birthday was celebrated in the same ward. His friends had come to be with him, his family had distributed cake to the doctors and nurses. His ma had put a few crumbs into his mouth.

The boy turned 21 quietly on November 16.

A year after the bomb blast in his train carriage at Mira Road station, Amit, the passionate volleyball player, continues to be unconscious.

Every evening his parents bring him out on his wheelchair to the window closest to his ward for what has been his only outing for the past year.

Image: A year after 11/7, Amit Singh continues to be unconscious at Jaslok Hospital. Photograph: Reuben N V

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