The eyes of 11-year-old Nahin wander restlessly over a stream of visitors to his room, but fail yet again to spot his parents among them.

"Everyone's coming except my parents," he says in a voice tinged with desperation.

Visitors came in hordes since Friday morning when a car crash killed Nahin's parents, Quazi Shahidur Rahman and Nasreen Shahid, along with Rahman's colleague at Petrobangla MA Baset and his wife, and the driver.

A student of class V, Nahin is currently under treatment at the National Institute of Traumatology and Orthopaedic Rehabilitation (NITOR).

In another bed only a few doors down from Nahin's room was lying Baset's 23-year-old-son Nihad Adnan Amit. His intermittent bellows echoed through the hospital floors. They were not as much of pain as were of watching his parents burn to death before his very eyes.

Like Nahin, he too was fortunate to escape death in the crash and was rescued by the locals. But the horrors of the scene haunt him like a ghost and each time they get even more intense.

The microbus carrying Nahin, Amit, their parents crashed head-on with a speeding truck at Baghata in Narsingdi Sadar on Friday morning. On hearing a loud bang, villagers rushed to the scene and pulled out Nahin and Amit from the back seat.

But before they could get to the others trapped inside, the car went up in flames and all on board were burnt to death.

Amit gazes blankly as a sense of guilt arising out of his failure to save his parents overwhelms him.

Both Nahin and Amit are out of danger and have started to eat again, the doctors at the hospital said, adding that it would take several months for Amit to make a full recovery.