Thiruvananthapuram: Emotional scenes were witnessed at the Thiruvananthapuram International airport late into Thursday night as the bodies of five members of a family, who died due to a possible gas leak at a resort in Nepal, were brought back to the Kerala capital.
Dear and near ones of Chenkottukonam native Praveen and family waited patiently at the airport as the proceedings were delayed by a couple of hours.
"This is not how they should have come home," they were heard telling to one another.
Praveen, wife Saranya and their children loved to go on trips. And their family and friends recollected their happy faces as they returned after each journey.
The family had joined a group of 15 tourists from Kerala to a trip to the Himalayan country. They had shared a room with another family from Kozhikode on Monday night. All eight were found unconscious the next morning and were declared brought dead at the hospital.
Three days after that tragic news reached Kerala, their mortal remains were brought to Thiruvananthapuram.
The dead bodies from Kathmandu were taken to the Delhi airport in an Air India flight by Thursday afternoon.
Then another plane ferried the bodies to Thiruvananthapuram in the evening. The flight had a stop-over at Kochi. It was delayed by 1.5 hours and reached by 12:01am.
By then all arrangements were done at the airport. Five ambulances were ready by 10:30pm. The gates were opened at 12:35am. The police formed a human barricade and the bodies were taken out through a special gate. The family and friends of Praveen could not hold back their tears.
Praveen's brother-in-law Rajesh was also present along with friends Ram Kumar, Anand, and Balagopal. Praveen's parents did not come to the airport.
Mayor K Sreekumar, M Vincent MLA, Collector K Gopalakrishnan, and BJP district president V V Rajesh were among those who received the bodies at the airport.
Then these were shifted to the Medical College mortuary in ambulances. The bodies would be taken to Praveen's house as per the government protocol on Friday morning.
The final rites would be performed by Saranya's nephew, 3-year-old Arav, the son of her sister Aishwarya. The three children would be laid to rest on the house premises, while the parents would be cremated.
