Lanka terror: Grief-stricken kin waiting to bring remains home
Bengaluru, Apr 23: Yet to come to grips with the loss of their dear ones, shattered kith and kin of those killed in the devastating serial blasts in Sri Lanka are now faced with the problem of bringing the dismembered bodies home which, according to a relative, have started decomposing.
Family members are anxiously waiting for the bodies to take them back to India and perform the last rites, said a relative of a JDS worker killed in the blast that ripped through Shangri-La Hotel in Colombo on Easter Sunday.
S Shivakumar, who is in Sri Lanka, told PTI over phone Tuesday that the autopsy on his relative H Shivakumar's body has been completed but the problem was to fly it to India.
"The body is dismembered. There is no storage facility here. It is decaying fast. We have to bring it to Bengaluru.
There are eight bodies here:
They (Sri Lankan authorities) told us that three bodies could be flown today and rest will be flown tomorrow," a distraught Shivakumar said.
As many as 321 people were killed in a chain of blasts that ripped through churches and hotels in Sri Lanka on April 21.
The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the terror strike, the deadliest to shake the island nation since the end of the country's civil war in 2009 after the defeat of the LTTE.
From India, Karnataka bore the brunt of the mayhem as 10 deceased are from the state, including eight JDS workers.
The victims are: Ramesh, K M Lakshminarayan, M Rangappa, K G Hanumantharayappa, H Shivakumar, Narayan Chandrashekar, A Mare Gowda, H Puttaraju, Shettypalya R Nagaraj and Razeena Khader Kukkady, according to information from the state government.
Barring Nagaraj and Kukkady, the others were JD(S) workers.
Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy gave the name of the JD(S) workers in a tweet.
The Karnataka government too has intensified efforts to bring the bodies back home.
A senior IAS officer told PTI that the body of Shettypalya Nagaraj will be flown to India tonight.
"As per our information, which we have received from the High Commission of India in Sri Lanka, they are coordinating everything.
One body will be coming today that of Shettypalya Nagaraj at 8.20 pm by Sri Lankan Airlines," principal secretary in the department of personnel and administrative reforms, Parvez Anjum, said.
Anjum has been appointed by the State government as the nodal officer to coordinate with the Indian Embassy in Sri Lanka to bring the bodies to Bengaluru.
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Surat LS candidate Nilesh Kumbhani whose nomination form was rejected suspended from Congress
Ahmedabad, Apr 25: The Gujarat Congress on Friday suspended from the party for six years its Surat Lok Sabha candidate Nilesh Kumbhani, whose nomination form was rejected over discrepancies leading to the BJP's Mukesh Dalal getting elected unopposed.
A statement from the Congress said the party's disciplinary committee decided to suspend Kumbhani after thorough discussion, adding it had come to the conclusion that the nomination form was rejected due to gross negligence on his part or "in connivance with the BJP".
"To be fair to you we have given time to you to explain your case but instead of coming before the party disciplinary committee you have gone incommunicado. After your form was rejected by the authorities, BJP went ahead and got form of other eight candidates withdrawn. This has deprived people of Surat their voting rights," the Congress disciplinary committee headed by Balu Patel said.
"People of Surat and party workers have become very angry due to your action and are expressing their anger in different ways. The Congress party has decided to suspend you for six years from the party," the press note said.
Kumbhani's nomination form was rejected on April 21 after his three proposers submitted affidavits to the district returning officer claiming the signatures on the document was not theirs.
The nomination form of Suresh Padsala, the Congress' substitute candidate from Surat, was also invalidated on the same grounds.
In his order, Returning Officer Sourabh Pardhi said the three nomination forms submitted by Kumbhani and Padsala were rejected after prima facie discrepancy was found in the signatures of the proposers and they did not appear to be genuine.
Kumbhani, a former corporator from Surat, had unsuccessfully fought the 2022 Assembly polls from Kamrej there.
The Bharatiya Janata Party's Mukesh Dalal was elected unopposed from Surat Lok Sabha constituency on April 22 after all other nominees, including one from BSP, withdrew from the fray one by one on the last day of withdrawing papers.
