Drowning victim’s body back home
The body of drowned man Hemin Limbachiya has departed New Zealand for India.
Yesterday, Davis Funerals executive director Neil Little confirmed Limbachiya’s body had left New Zealand on an early-morning flight on Sunday, and it was expected to have arrived in India by yesterday afternoon NZT. ‘‘We organised his repatriation back to India ... It definitely departed yesterday,’’ he said.
Limbachiya’s body was taken from Hawke’s Bay to the funeral service’s Mount Eden branch on Friday.
‘‘It would have just been a fairly normal, standard repatriation, you know we are doing this on a regular basis so we would’ve been liaising with the Indian authorities to get permission to travel. All of that is usually governed by getting necessary approvals from consulates, embassies.’’
The Indian Weekender reported that Limbachiya’s body was taken on a Singapore Airlines plane out of New Zealand at 1.15am on Sunday to Vadodara, Gujarat Limbachiya’s hometown. His last rites would be performed there, it reported.
Limbachiya, 26, drowned on January 14 at Waimarama Beach while swimming with his new wife Tanvi Bhavsar and a male relative. Rescuer Cameron McCallum said Limbachiya’s final act of love was to ask him to save his wife. Their relative made it ashore by himself. In the moments before drowning, he tried desperately to keep Bhavsar afloat, before telling 16-year-old McCallum to save his beloved over himself.
A Givealittle page established to support Bhavsar in the wake of the tragedy has received about $23,000 in donations. Bhavsar and Limbachiya had gotten married in India on December 4, after a civil wedding in Wellington in 2016. They arrived back in New Zealand on January 4 and were in the process of filing for residency.
Bhavsar was discharged from Hawke’s Bay Hospital last Tuesday. It was unknown whether she had accompanied Limbachiya’s body to India.