Bodies of Delhiites killed in boat capsize brought home

Eight bodies of Delhiites, who met a watery grave when the boat they were travelling in capsized in Kerala's Idukki district, were brought to the capital in a chartered flight early.

Eight bodies of Delhiites, who met a watery grave when the boat they were travelling in capsized in Kerala's Idukki district, were brought to the capital in a chartered flight early on Friday.

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Twelve people from the national capital were among over 40 killed in the incident, which took place on Wednesday evening in a lake in Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary.

The bodies of Pradeep Jain, an official of a pharmaceutical company, his wife Sandhya, daughter Shruti, his neighbours Nirmala Jain, Sangeeta Sharma and Partha Sharma, Harwinder Singh and Shalika were brought this morning.

"The eight bodies were brought in a chartered flight. The flight landed in the capital at around 4:30 am and the bodies were handed over to the relatives by around 6 am," an official said in New Delhi.

A confusion in a hospital in Idukki had delayed the identification of four bodies - that of Arun Kaura and his family - from Delhi following which their bodies could not be airlifted on Friday.

"There was a bit of confusion. One of the bodies shown to relatives for identification of Kauras was that of someone else. So there was a delay," the official said.

The flight had first gone to Hyderabad and Bangalore where bodies of victims from these places were handed over to relatives.