$13,000 to bring son home
The Indian family of a student who drowned at a popular Hawke’s Bay waterfall a fortnight ago say they cannot afford the $13,000 cost of repatriating his body back home.
Aman Kumar, 20, failed to resurface after diving into the water at Maraetotara Falls near Hastings while on ‘‘a fun trip with friends’’ on December 21. His body was recovered by the police national dive squad the following morning.
An aspiring pilot, Kumar was a student at Air Hawke’s Bay flight school in Bridge Pa¯ when he died.
Kumar’s cousin, Ajit Singh, speaking to Stuff from the family home in Delhi, northern India, said the family was distraught.
‘‘[He was the] only single boy . . . so it is a huge loss for his family, because after his student life he was the one who will take care of the whole family,’’ Singh said.
‘‘He had so many dreams and his family just wanted to see him to reach on his dream.’’
Kumar’s wish was to be a pilot but ‘‘because of bad time and bad luck, all goes wrong’’. Kumar was planning to finish his studies next month before returning to India to work. He had never been to New Zealand before coming here in January last year.
His body was returned to India on December 31.
Kumar family spokespeople begged India’s minister of external affairs, Sushma Swaraj, to repatriate the body as early as possible.
Because the death had occurred so close to Christmas, there were delays, upsetting his relatives.
‘‘Aman’s body has returned in India but after nine days, this again [was] tragic for us to see him after so long . . . it was so hard for us to wait after such incident,’’ Singh said. The family has also been hit with a $13,764 repatriation bill from funeral home Terry Longley & Son. Singh said they could not afford to pay such a ‘‘huge amount’’. While there was a possibility life insurance and Accident Compensation Corporation’s (ACC) accidental death policy
may provide some financial assistance, there were no guarantees.
Director Terry Longley said that the bill would be closer to $12,000. ‘‘It’s the relative cost of sending a body out of a country, and if you were to go to any other country out of New Zealand, you’d be looking between $12,000 and $15,000.’’
The cost covered emergency death registration, embalming, medical sealing, transport and airfare costs, Longley said.
Singh said the family had not received a police or full autopsy report, or Kumar’s luggage. He said police ‘‘hardly pick our calls, after calling so many times’’.
Hawke’s Bay area commander Inspector David Greig said all of police’s contact had been via the Indian consulate.
Police could not see any record of having any direct contact with Kumar’s family, nor any record of any family member attempting to make contact with police.
Only a coroner could authorise release of the reports, not police, Greig said.
The consular secretary of the High Commission of India in Wellington, Paramjeet Singh, said the Christmas holidays ‘‘definitely delayed the [repatriation] by a couple of days’’.
‘‘This was repeatedly explained to the family, which was obviously desperate to have Aman amongst them as soon as possible."
In January last year, Indian national Hemin Limbachiya, 26, drowned at Waimarama Beach in Hawke’s Bay.
Speaking to Stuff at the time, cousin Chinmay Valvi said that his family was becoming unwell after the one-week wait for Limbachiya’s body to be repatriated.
Since then, Limbachiya’s wife Tanvi Bhavsar, who was swimming with him at the time of his death, has been granted a twoyear work visa on humanitarian grounds after battling with immigration authorities in New Zealand.