Tarishi Jain was a student at UC Berkeley and was on vacation in Dhaka. (AFP Photo)
Nineteen-year-old Tarishi Jain, the lone Indian citizen to die in the terrorist attack in Bangladesh, had been under stress in recent months because of a foot injury, relatives said. It was not healing as quickly as the Berkeley student had expected, and the pain had returned.
"When I got a call at dawn today about her death in Bangladesh, my first thought was, 'Oh, poor girl, she could not even have run and saved herself,' " said Shirish Jain, 45, a cousin of Tarishi's who lives in a New Delhi suburb. "She has been in a lot of pain of late."
An undergraduate student studying economics at the University of California at Berkeley, Tarishi Jain was among the 20 foreigners killed when gunmen stormed a cafe in Dhaka, the Bangladeshi capital, late Friday night. Her family had moved to Dhaka from Singapore less than a decade ago, and her father set up a flourishing garment manufacturing and export business. But they remained Indian citizens.
Just months ago, her cousin recalled, Jain was regaling her relatives with stories of her Berkeley experiences during a family visit to India. She was a member of the International Students Association at the university.
"She was a vivacious girl. She had an international outlook and was ambitious," Shirish Jain said. "The entire extended family got together for lunch when they came. I remember she was so cheerful and chirpy."
Indians learned of Jain's death when the minister for external affairs, Sushma Swaraj, tweeted Saturday: "I am extremely pained to share that the terrorists have killed Tarushi, an Indian girl who was taken hostage in the terror attack in Dhaka."
Swaraj also tweeted that India is arranging visas for the Jain family, who will be flown back in a special plane. Tarishi's body will be taken to the family's ancestral town, Firozabad, in northern India, for cremation.
"The attack in Dhaka has pained us beyond words," Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Twitter.
The family asked the media not to publish photos of Tarishi Jain.
Shirish Jain had read about the attack in Dhaka before going to sleep Friday.
"I immediately thought of my family in Dhaka, but I never imagined that my own family would be affected like this," she said. "Our mind doesn't think like that, you know. We know there are terrorist attacks all over the world. But it has now come to our home. It has come too close."
© 2016 The Washington Post
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)