Neighbours said Wednesday New Panvel resident Dilip Desale was soft-spoken and a keen community member, who dreamt of visiting places after his retirement. Desale was on one such trip when he was killed in the Pahalgam terror attack, leaving his family and neighbours shattered.
Desale, 64, and his wife, Usha, 60, were part of a group of 35 tourists from New Panvel near Mumbai, who were on a visit to Jammu and Kashmir. The trip, organised by Nisarga Paryatan Tours, had only begun on Monday and was meant to last 10 days.
His relatives said the delay in the original schedule resulted in the group arriving in Pahalgam Tuesday — the day the terror attack took place in which he and 25 others were killed. The group’s bus, while making its way along the road, stopped at Baisaran meadow to explore the valley when the attack happened.
“Desale and his group were not scheduled to be there but for delays and a mess-up in their schedule,” said a shocked relative of the retired electrical personnel who worked for Lubrizol Pvt Ltd Company.
Another relative also said the group’s trip to another spot was cancelled because it was very crowded, and a neighbour added the plan was “altered last minute by the operator”.
Desale’s son and elder daughter, who live in Pune, rushed to New Panvel as soon as they heard the news. Relatives from his hometown village in Malegaon, Nashik, also converged to pay their respects.
“The loss is sudden, shocking and tragic for us to even think of,” another relative of Desale, who lives in Panvel, said.
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Sources said Desale’s body is being flown back to Mumbai on an Air India flight, and is expected to arrive Wednesday afternoon.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis Wednesday confirmed that six tourists from the state were killed in the Pahalgam terror attack, which occurred at about 3 pm Tuesday at the Baisaran meadow, a popular tourist spot, as militants fired indiscriminately on a group.
The Pahalgam terror attack — one of the deadliest in recent times on civilians in Kashmir — has raised questions about security arrangements for tourists in the region, particularly as the summer season sets in.