The state government has announced that it will meet the expenses to bring the bodies of eight members from Kerala, who died at a resort at Daman in Nepal on Tuesday.
Norka Roots, Field Agency of the Department of Non-Resident Keralites Affairs (Norka), in a communication to the Indian Embassy in Nepal, said that Norka Roots is ready to bear all the expenses involved in bringing back the mortal remains of Praveen Krishnan Nair and family as well as Ranjith P and family from Kathmandu to Kerala. With the Indian Embassy in Nepal reportedly refusing to bear the expenses on technical grounds, the state has stepped in to bear the expenses.
Minister for Tourism Kadakampally Surendran spoke to Minister of State for External Affairs V Muraleedharan on the issue and the latter is understood to have responded positively. A report in The Hindu quotes Muraleedharan as saying that the kin of victims had not placed any request for financial assistance with the embassy.
The embassy officials informed the Minister that the relatives of both families had told them that NoRKA was meeting the expenses and hence no financial assistance was needed for them.
Meanwhile, the bodies of the eight members are expected to be brought to Thiruvananthapuram and Kozhikode on Thursday and Friday respectively.
The embalmed bodies of five persons from the family in Chenkottukonam in Thiruvananthapuram — Praveen Krishnan Nair (39), Saranya (34), Sreebhadra (9), Aarcha (8) and Abhi Nair (7) — will be flown from Kathmandu to New Delhi on Thursday morning and then to Thiruvananthapuram in the evening. The bodies will be kept in a mortuary at night and will be brought to their house on Friday morning.
The bodies of three persons hailing from Kunnamangalam in Kozhikode — Ranjith Punathil (39), Indu Ranjith (34) and Vaishnav Ranjith (2) — will reach Kerala on Friday.
The eight members, belonging to two families in Kerala, were on a holiday in Nepal when the tragic incident took place. They died due to suspected carbon monoxide poisoning in the hotel room.