Bali bomb victims tell of anguish

Two lawyers who were seriously injured in last month's Bali bomb has spoken of their desire to get back to full-time work.

New Zealand-qualified Andrew Crook, who works in City firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer's Singapore office, and Saptak Santra, an English-qualified associate from the Singapore office of US firm Jones Day Reavis & Pogue, were in Bali with the Singapore Cricket Club rugby team for a tournament.

Twelve of the 17-strong squad were drinking in a bar when the bomb went off; eight died.

Team-mate Tim Arnold, an English-qualified lawyer who was in-house at Standard Chartered Bank, was one of the fatalities.

Mr Crook and Mr Santra were both in hospital for almost three weeks with burns, shrapnel wounds and ruptured ear drums.

Although they were evacuated within 48 hours back to Singapore, Mr Santra underwent emergency surgery in Bali because of a piece of shrapnel lodged in his back near his lung.

Mr Crook said he does not remember much of the night the bomb went off as he was knocked out for around 20 minutes.

'Because I'm making such a quick recovery, sometimes it feels like it didn't happen,' he said.

'That kind of thing doesn't happen to normal people.'

Mr Santra said he 'can't figure out why some of us survived and some of us didn't'.

He said he was the only person at his table to survive.

Both said their firms have been very supportive.

Freshfields is covering all of Mr Crook's medical bills, arranged for his parents to travel from New Zealand, and kept his apartment clean while he was in hospital.

It also offered him the chance to recuperate in New Zealand, but Mr Crook has instead chosen to return to work part-time.

'I want to get back to work as soon as I can because that's part of getting better,' he said, adding that the firm was far more cautious about his returning so soon.

'Physically it's okay,' he said, 'but sometimes I find it hard to concentrate.'

Mr Santra - who worked at Freshfields until moving to Jones Day last year - said travelling to Indonesia had been a major part of his job.

'Going back to Indonesia and going back to work is all part of returning to a normal life,' he said.

He too is now working part-time.

Both also intend to start playing rugby again when they can; their burns mean they cannot go out in the sun at the moment.

Dan Miller, a Hong Kong-based assistant at Herbert Smith, was on holiday on the island and died in the bomb attack.

His wife was critically injured and the firm said it was fully supporting the family.

Neil Rose