Stunned by grief, Kerala’s northern district of Kasargode on Sunday witnessed the funerals of 30 passengers of the ill-fated Air India Express flight which crashed in Mangalore.
Of the 60-odd Malayalees who died in the crash, around 40 are said to be from Kasargode, where every panchayat has dozens of people living in the Gulf countries. Not all the bodies have been identified so far.
Neeleswaram wore a mournful look as the charred remains of the urban bank president, Bhaskaran and his wife, Komalavalli, were brought home and cremated. The couple had gone to Dubai to spend holidays with their children. Neeleswaram is observing a shutdown in their memory on Monday.
Wails instead of the traditional wedding songs punctuated the air in the house of Fausia, whose two brothers, Basheer and siddique, had flown in to attend her marriage, only to meet their end in a horrific crash. Relatives have gone to Mangalore to identify their bodies.
Likewise, Hussain, who flew home to see his ailing father, is still to recover from a double tragedy. His brother, Siddique, caught the doomed flight while he did not get a ticket. “I came by a later flight, only to hear that my father was dead and my brother was killed in the crash,” he said.
Similar stories abound in Uppala, Kanhangad, Uduma, Panathur, Kallar and Thalangara panchayats which lost several people in the tragedy.
Senior politicians including the opposition leader, Oommen Chandy, the KPCC chief, Ramesh Chennithala, the Union minister of state for railways, Mr E. Ahmed, and state health minister P.K. Sreemathy, visited the houses of the crash victims and consoled the relatives.