Bodies of eight Indians to be flown in today

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The bodies of the eight people, including four minors, who died due to suspected asphyxiation in their hotel room in Nepal on Tuesday, will be flown back on Thursday, officials of the External Affairs Minister said on Wednesday.

Union minister of state for External Affairs V Muraleedharan said the post-mortem procedures of the eight Keralites has already begun and efforts are on to expedite the process.

In a tweet, the minister said he had spoken to the Indian Embassy officials in Nepal.

“Spoke to Indian Embassy in Nepal. Post-mortem of the deceased 8 Indian tourists has already started. Our embassy is working closely with the T.U. Teaching hospital and local authorities to expedite the process,” he said.

The eight Kerala residents — two couples and their children — slept in one room at a hotel in Daman, a popular tourist spot about 55km from capital Kathmandu. The tourists, who were returning to India and were part of a 15-member group, used a gas heater to keep their room warm, a district official said.

The group reportedly turned on the gas heater inside the room while the windows and doors were closed. The police suspected that they might have passed out due to lack of ventilation, according to some reports in the Nepali media. Praveen Krishnan Nair, a 39-year-old Thiruvananthapuram resident who was working in Dubai; his 34-year-old wife, Saranya, who was doing a master’s degree in Kochi; and their three children, Sreebhadra (9), Aarcha (8) and Abhi Nair (7), died in the incident.

Nair’s friend Renjith Kumar TB, a 39-year-old from Kozhikode; his wife, Indu Renjith, 34; and their son Vaishnav Renjith (2) were in the same room and died. The couple had another son, who was sleeping in a different room.

“There were no heaters in the room. We were told temperature was below 2 degree C. They made a request to the hotel staff and they shifted a gas heater to the room. We were told patio heaters cannot be used indoors as they need good air flow,” a relative of one of the deceased said.