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"Andhra Pradesh was churning out chess talents with such regularity that even God became envious. If this is not the case, then why fate wiped out the lives of five promising players of the State in such a ghastly
manner. ''This was the statement of local chess player Gourahari Mohapatra, who could not find any other way to express his shock at the demise of the AP players, who died in a road accident at Sakhigopal, near Puri, on Sunday.
Like Mohapatra, scores of chess aficionados of this holy town were unable to reconcile with the tragic incident even a day after its occurrence. On Monday, deep sorrow loomed over the town as hundreds of sports lovers gathered at the town hospital to have a final glimpse of the battered bodies of the deceased.
The postmortem was conducted on Monday morning in the absence of their family members before being sent to Andhra Pradesh via Bhubaneswar by Falaknuma Express. Incidentally, the train had to be detained for about 90 minutes as there was a delay in the arrival of the coffins.
All the victims seemed to have died after receiving severe blows on their heads and upper bodies.
There was a little confusion over the identity of Asian U - 10 champion M Abhinav. The face of the boy from Nalgonda was damaged so badly that senior Orissa player Manoj Panigrahi, who had played against him in the last National `B' championship, could not recognise him. However, the doubts were cleared later with a coach of Khurda Road confirming Abhinav's identity. A card with Abhinav's name on it and recovered by police from the boy's pocket also helped in solving the mystery.
But confusion continued to overshadow the postmortem house till late afternoon as neither the police nor the organisers of the ill-fated All-India Fide
Rated Tournament, in which the 11-member AP team was supposed to participate, did not know as to where the bodies would be sent. To make matters worse, no official of the local
Civil Administration nor anyone from the State Sports Department was available to organise things.
But it was the local police and the tournament organisers who finally did everything from nailing the coffins to offering flowers on the dead bodies.
Before a police van took the bodies to Bhubaneswar, only one parent of the deceased could reach here. He was P Damodar Rao, who sobbed silently after seeing his son P Haricharan, the youngest among the deceased.
Earlier, about 50 organisers and participants of the cancelled tournament observed two minutes' silence in a meeting held in remembrances of the dead.
International Master Sekhar Sahu, the convenor of Spassky Club and Orissa State Chess Association's
Secretary G B Dash announced in their condolence message that the cancelled tournament would be conducted next year in the memory of the deceased players.
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