The five-member family, including three children, died while on vacation in Nepal
Dubai: The bodies of Dubai-based engineer Praveen Krishnan Nair, his wife Saranya and their three children who passed away in Nepal on Tuesday, were cremated at 9:30 am in the Indian state of Kerala. The cremation took place at Chengottukulam, Nair’s family home in Thiruvananthapuram.
Nair and family, including his wife Saranya and three children Sreebhadra (9 years), Aarcha (8 years) and Abhinav (7 years) along with three others died from asphyxiation apparently due to a gas heater leak at their holiday resort in Nepal earlier this week.
On Thursday, the bodies were transported on an Air India flight from Kathmandu to New Delhi and then airlifted to their hometown Thiruvanthapuram at 11:45pm. They were kept at the Thiruvanthapuram Medical College mortuary.
A relative told Gulf News that the bodies were brought to Chengottukonam on Friday morning at 7am. They were laid to rest in the backyard of their house. The relative added: “The bodies of the three children have been buried together, with their parents cremated on either side.”
Nair who lived and worked in Dubai, and his friends Renjith, Ramkumar, and Jayakrishnan had planned this vacation with their families to Nepal. On their return from Pokhara in Nepal they made a rest-stop at Daman before resuming their trip back to India. The group of 15 had booked four rooms, one for each family at a resort in the Makwanpur district.
Another relative revealed to Gulf News: “The friends who had traveled with the deceased told us that they had reached the resort at night. Since the room was big enough, and they were having fun, the two families decided to stay together. It was very cold and there was no heater in the room, so, Praveen called the reception and asked for a room heater. When he insisted, the hotel authorities arranged to move an eight-foot gas heater, which was used in the restaurant, to the room, to keep them warm.”
Reportedly, according to the manager at the resort, Shiva KC, eight of them stayed in a room and turned on a gas heater for warmth, the manager said, adding that all the windows and the door of the room were bolted from inside.
Praveen’s friend Renjith Kumar TB, 39 from Kozhikode, his wife Indu Renjith, 34 and their son Vaishnav Renjith, 2 were sharing Nair’s room. Their first child, seven-year-old Madhav, had apparently insisted that he wanted to spend the night with friends who were sleeping in a different room.
Their bodies will be cremated in Kozhikode at 5pm today.
According to local reports, one of Krishnan’s friends had said there were difficulties in arranging money to transport the bodies of the deceased. Norka Roots (Non-Resident Keralites), a department of the Kerala government, assured to bear all the expenses involved.
The families said that the Indian embassy and the Malayali Association have been helping them with procuring airline tickets, postmortem procedures and other processes.
The post mortem reports are yet to come in.
