Tulika Jain, mother of Tarishi Jain, at the funeral on Monday. Photo Courtesy: The Telegraph

"Don't call her a martyr, she wanted to live," said Tulika Jain, mother of Tarishi who was killed in the Dhaka terror attack.

During the cremation of the youth yesterday, an inconsolable Tulika repeatedly asked, “Why did they kill my daughter? I need a reason why she was killed? Is life so cheap?" she cried, all the while on top of her daughter's casket.

"Why my Taru? She was a good girl. What did we do wrong that my Taru had to die like this?" Tulika asked. "Don't call her a martyr, she wanted to live. I was just some distance away when my Taru was being hunted down. Why didn't I do something?" she kept telling herself.

According to The Telegraph, Tarishi, the 19-year-old who was studying Economics at the University of California, Berkeley was cremated in Sukhrali village Gurgaon, India yesterday.

She was in Bangladesh for an internship program by Eastern Bank Limited and her project was on EBL-commerce growth opportunity in Bangladesh.

Distraught, Tulika, remained strong and accompanied her daughter from Dhaka on the flight to Delhi, and remained firm in the belief that Tarishi could be revived.

But during the creamtion ceremony, the reality slowly sunk in and she pleaded a relative, saying, "Everything will be all right. Mamaji, you are a doctor, do something. I know medicines can perform miracles. I know she will get up, mamaji get her to me. Get her to me please".

Tulika believed that Tarishi had been killed because she was an Indian. “Tell everyone the truth, the truth is that she was killed because she was an Indian," she told her husband Sanjiv.

"I don't know anything, why is she dead, tell me? Should she be dead? She was just at a bakery doing what teens do. She had gone to Dhaka on a holiday and she wanted to do so much good for the people there. How was she an enemy for the terrorists?" she kept asking those who surrounded her.

Congress president Sonia Gandhi, who herself lost her husband and mother-in-law to violence, wrote to Tarishi's parents, expressing her "deepest condolence" in this hour of grief.

"I was really pained after hearing about your daughter's death. This was a tragic incident and it was against humanity. This kind of violence is a blot to the whole world community. Those who kill people in cold blood can't be well-wisher of anybody. We have to build an atmosphere against this," Sonia wrote.

"I know it is very difficult for the parents and the relatives to come to terms with this, but there is no other way but to keep patience and there are no words to console," she said. "But still there are some incidents in our life over which we don't have any control and have to live with it."

Source: Telegraph