It was the second escape for cinema director N. Shankar, who had married just three days earlier at the Shalimar Function Palace in Nampally here. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary that cold Wednesday morning, yet by 11.50 a.m., a deafening blast turned Jubilee Hills into a scene of chaos.

A black cloud of smoke rose over the hillock at the edge of Jubilee Hills as debris and fire scattered across the road. In an instant, a quiet morning became a scene of horror, leaving onlookers stunned and roads littered with the aftermath of destruction.

Among those caught in the havoc was Sattiah, who was working on chiseling rock at Kondapur. “By lunch time, the road and surrounding area were covered with legs, arms, burnt body parts, clumps of hair and the stench of flesh,” he recalls, the memory

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