Mortal remains of 8 Indian tourists flown back to Kerala from Nepal

The mortal remains of eight Indian tourists, including four minors who died of possible asphyxiation in their room at a mountainous resort in Nepal, were flown back to their hometowns in Kerala on Thursday, senior officials said.

All formalities, including the postmortem, were completed on Wednesday night and the bodies were flown on two separate Air India flights from Kathmandu to New Delhi, according to sources at the Indian Embassy here.

The mortal remains of Praveen Krishnan Nair, his wife Saranya Sasi and their three children will be taken to Thiruvananthapuram from Delhi, and of Ranjith Kumar Adatholath Punathil, his wife Indu Lakshmi Peethambaran Ragalatha and their son to Kozhikode from Delhi. The

victims were among a group of 15 tourists from Kerala who had checked into a resort in Daman, a popular tourist spot in Makawanpur district, some 70-km south of Kathmandu. The group, after travelling to Pokhara was on their way back home and stayed at Everest Panorama Resort in Daman on Monday night.

Although they had booked a total of four rooms, eight of them stayed in a room and turned on a gas heater for warmth, the manager said, adding that all the windows

and the door of the room were bolted from inside. All eight of them were found unconscious the next day morning when hotel staff went to deliver morning bed coffee. Doctors declared them brought dead when they were rushed to a hospital in Kathmandu on a helicopter.

Meanwhile, Nepal’s Department of Tourism has formed a five-member committee to investigate whether there were any lapses in the safety of tourists by the resort administration.