Abu Dhabi: Six Indian villagers, who reached Abu Dhabi two weeks ago to identify the bodies of their family members who died in a fire accident, had a sigh of relief on Wednesday.
The UAE authorities identified the four workers’ bodies by DNA tests and two bodies will be repatriated early on Thursday and the remaining two early on Friday, a senior official at the Indian Embassy told Gulf News on Wednesday.
“We are relieved that finally we are able to repatriate the bodies after a long wait,” said Dinesh Kumar, Counsellor - Community Affairs at the embassy. As Gulf News reported on March 22 and 24, six family members of the victims had to fly from the South Indian state of Telangana to give DNA samples to identify the bodies that were burnt beyond recognition. Of the five workers killed in the fire on October 19, 2016, the body of one worker was repatriated after DNA matching was done by a relative working in the UAE.
The family members of the remaining four workers had to wait for nearly five months to get their passports for travelling to the UAE for DNA identification.
The bodies of Thota Ragesh, 28, and Gandla Abhilash, 28, will be repatriated on a Thursday morning flight to Hyderabad, accompanied by their family members, said a senior executive of the workers’ company.
The bodies of Muchinla Naresh, 28, and Malavath Prakash, 32, will be repatriated early on Friday, accompanied by family members, said Mohammad Hilmy, Human Resource manager of Gulf Dunes Landscaping and Agricultural Services.
Prakash’s brother Malavath Subhash told Gulf News that he did not inform the family about the arrival of the body. “We will tell them tomorrow (Thursday) night only. Otherwise, they will start crying now. Why put them into sadness now?”
As Gulf News reported on March 24, Prakash’s son, 12-year-old Malavath Akhil, and Ragesh’s son, 11-year-old Thota Rajesh, met in Abu Dhabi for the first time but they were surprised to learn about their common dream of becoming a police officer.
Their uncles accompanying them said the families would deposit the expected compensation money in banks for their studies.
The company manager said he was waiting for the police report to process the documents for arranging the compensation to the workers’s families from the insurance company.
“We are expecting to send the compensation to their families within a few weeks,” Hilmy said.
The embassy official said the Telangana state government would arrange ambulances to transport the bodies of the deceased to their villages located around 200km away from Hyderabad airport.
