Bodies of victims arrive

Bodies of eight Delhiites, who were drowned after their boat capsized in Kerala’s Idukki district, were brought to the Capital early on Friday.

Bodies of eight Delhiites, who were drowned after their boat capsized in Kerala’s Idukki district, were brought to the Capital early on Friday.

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The bodies, that arrived on a flight chartered by the Kerala government, were of Pradeep Jain, vice-president of a pharmaceutical company, his wife Sandhya, daughter Shruti and relatives Vimla Jain, Sangeeta Sharma and Parth Sharma.

The other two were of Harvinder Singh and Shalika.

The bodies were were brought to the city by the Jains’ relatives and the four members of their family who survived the tragedy.

As many as 12 people from Delhi were among the 44 killed in the tragedy, which took place on Wednesday evening at a lake in Thekkady wildlife sanctuary.

“The flight landed around 4:30 am and the bodies were handed over to relatives by 6 am,” said an official representative of the Kerala government.

The official said there was some confusion at a hospital in Idukki, which delayed the identification of four more bodies from the city — that of Arun Kaura and his family. Thus they couldn’t be brought on the same flight.

“One of the bodies shown for identification to the Kauras’ relatives was that of someone else,” the official added.

The plane first flew to Hyderabad and Bangalore where bodies of victims from those cities were handed over to relatives.