London: Whilst several thousand Indian nationals and OCI cardholders remain stuck in Britain, dead bodies at least are being flown back to India.
The body of Siddharth Murkumbi (23) was the first to be flown back to India after New Delhi closed Indian airspace to schedule international passenger flights. He had been pursuing an MBA in marketing since September 2019 at the University of Central Lancashire. His body was flown back on April 9 to Mumbai on an Air India flight that had been chartered by the British government to bring back Britons stranded in India.
There are at least two more bodies that need to be flown back. One is of an Indian student from Warangal, near Hyderabad, who suffered a cardiac arrest. The other is an Indian professional from Bengaluru who passed away just before the Indian lockdown. By the time the post-mortem was completed, India was in lockdown. His corpse will be sent on a charter flight when it picks up British people from Bengaluru as his family wants him cremated in India.
A third case is a British Indian who died of Covid-19 in Harrow. “He was alone here and all of his family is in India. His family in Bengaluru wanted his body to be flown back. But the UK authorities are saying because he tested Covid-19 positive he has to be cremated in the UK,” a community source told TOI.
“Dead bodies are being flown back on the Air India flights chartered by the British government to whichever airport in India these charter flights are coming from. However, no one else is allowed to go back at present,” a government of India source told TOI.
Out of the thousands of PIOs in the UK that wish to return, there are 20 “emergency cases” of which 18 are Indian citizens or OCI card holders whose next of kin (either a parent or sibling) has died in India. Two of them had to watch the funerals being live-streamed onto their mobiles on FaceTime. Another two are cases where one parent is very ill in India and there is no one else to take care of them.
“If the government of India decides to allow flights, then these emergency cases will go on the first flights,” the source said.
16/04/20 Naomi Canton/Times of India
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The body of Siddharth Murkumbi (23) was the first to be flown back to India after New Delhi closed Indian airspace to schedule international passenger flights. He had been pursuing an MBA in marketing since September 2019 at the University of Central Lancashire. His body was flown back on April 9 to Mumbai on an Air India flight that had been chartered by the British government to bring back Britons stranded in India.
There are at least two more bodies that need to be flown back. One is of an Indian student from Warangal, near Hyderabad, who suffered a cardiac arrest. The other is an Indian professional from Bengaluru who passed away just before the Indian lockdown. By the time the post-mortem was completed, India was in lockdown. His corpse will be sent on a charter flight when it picks up British people from Bengaluru as his family wants him cremated in India.
A third case is a British Indian who died of Covid-19 in Harrow. “He was alone here and all of his family is in India. His family in Bengaluru wanted his body to be flown back. But the UK authorities are saying because he tested Covid-19 positive he has to be cremated in the UK,” a community source told TOI.
“Dead bodies are being flown back on the Air India flights chartered by the British government to whichever airport in India these charter flights are coming from. However, no one else is allowed to go back at present,” a government of India source told TOI.
Out of the thousands of PIOs in the UK that wish to return, there are 20 “emergency cases” of which 18 are Indian citizens or OCI card holders whose next of kin (either a parent or sibling) has died in India. Two of them had to watch the funerals being live-streamed onto their mobiles on FaceTime. Another two are cases where one parent is very ill in India and there is no one else to take care of them.
“If the government of India decides to allow flights, then these emergency cases will go on the first flights,” the source said.
16/04/20 Naomi Canton/Times of India
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