Gloom descended over the Osmania mortuary as the bodies of the 28 deceased in the Shirdi bus accident were identified and handed over to family members, who came with white sheets that would serve as a shroud. Identification of 25 bodies was done on Saturday night, while another three was claimed by families on Sunday. Of the 28 bodies, nine were sent by air, 14 by road in ambulances, accompanied by relatives. “Among the nine bodies sent by air, seven were sent to Vizag, one to Nagpur and one to Chhattisgarh,” said Hyderabad district collector Natraj Gulzar.
“It is a tragic incident. Though the authorities have been prompt in arranging things here at the mortuary and getting the bodies out, they should have acted with the same promptness with these private bus operators,” lamented a friend of the deceased. Ministers Shridhar Babu and Botsa Satyanarayana visited the mortuary late on Saturday night and reviewed the arrangements with the officials and the Collector.
Meanwhile, unclaimed belongings of the dead arrived at the Mahatma Gandhi Bus Station early on Sunday. A total of 33 bags were received and were made available for the families of the deceased to collect at the police outpost at MGBS. However, no one came to claim the baggage. “The relatives who want to collect the baggage need to carry documents as evidence for identification and verification of the relationship with the deceased,” said Charminar Tahsildar Ratna Kalyani.
TCS staffers’ bodies reach Visakhapatnam
The bodies of seven TCS employees, who died in the road mishap at Sholapur on Maharastra border on Saturday, arrived here on Sunday morning. TCS sent the bodies in a special flight to Visakhapatnam airport, from where three of them were diverted to Vizianagaram. Twin sisters P. Deepthi Pynda and P. Divya Pynda, Suchitra and Umamaheswari hailed from Vizag city. V. Manasa, E. Krishna Sahitya and D. Naresh were residents of Vizianagaram. The family of the Vizag natives cremated the bodies at Chavulamadum near Railway station here.
Manasa’s classmate Sudhir recollected, “When I rang up Manasa’s phone, I found it switched off. It was then I got to know of the mishap at Sholapur. She was a goldmedalist of her deparment at the MVGR College of Engineering in Vizianagaram. It is an unbearable shock to all of her friends including me.” Meanwhile, Sahitya’s relative Ramakrishna said that the family had not yet recovered from the shock that she was no more.