Tragedy struck a group of 15 Kerala tourists in Nepal when eight of them, including four children, died after they fell unconscious probably due to a gas leak from a heater in their room at a mountainous resort in Pokhara, amid cold wave in the Himalayan region.
The tourists were airlifted to HAMS hospital in Kathmandu where they were pronounced dead on arrival, Superintendent of Police Sushil Singh Rathaur said.
Postmortem will be conducted on Wednesday and bodies will be taken to Kerala by Air India on Thursday.
“All eight were airlifted and brought to hospital in Kathmandu. A doctor from the Indian mission was also immediately sent to the hospital to check on welfare of patients and to provide necessary assistance,” said officials of Indian Embassy in Kathmandu.
The victims were identified as Praveen Nair and his wife Saranya and their kids Sreebhadra, Aarcha and Abhinav Saranya. Other three victims are Ranjith Kumar and his wife Indu Lakshmi and their younger son Vyshnav. Their elder son Madhav, who was in other room, survived. It is believed that leak of carbon monoxide from the heater led to the death of the eight members of the two families.
The group of 15 from two Kerala families were on their way back home and stayed at Everest Panorama Resort in Daman in Makawanpur district on Monday night.
According to the manager of the resort, the guests stayed in a room and turned on a gas heater to keep themselves warm. Although they had booked a total of four rooms, eight of them stayed in a room and remaining others in another room, the manager said, adding that all the windows and the door of the room were bolted from inside.
Praveen and Ranjit, both IT professionals, were engineering college classmates and the tour was arranged after a get-together with old friends in Delhi, a family member said. Praveen hails from Thiruvananthapuram, was an engineer in Dubai, while his wife, Saranya, was staying at Kochi along with 3 children and is a nursing student.
Ranjit from Kozhikode was working in an IT firm at Thiruvananthapuram, while his wife, Indu, was an accountant in a cooperative bank at Kozhikode, a family member said. Ranjit’s elder son Madhav had a lucky escape as he was sleeping in another room.
“Deeply distressed by the tragic news of the passing away of eight Indian tourists in Nepal,” External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar tweeted. He said the Indian embassy officials are stationed at the hospital and are providing necessary assistance. The Indian mission has assured all necessary assistance to the family members of the victims.
In Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan condoled the death of Malayali tourists in Nepal. On the directions of the Chief Minister, officials have taken steps to expedite procedures for the repatriation of the mortal remains of the victims, his office said.
Minister of State for External Affairs V Muraleedharan said the Indian Embassy officials were taking steps to bring the bodies back to India as early as possible. Nepal witnesses cold wave condition between December and January-end. Daman, which sits at an altitude of nearly 2,500 metres above the sea level, is a famous hill station situated 70-km south of Kathmandu, where tourists visit for magnificent mountain view.