Nepal plane crash: Builders' holiday turns into mourning for Trichy

KATHMANDU: When eight friends and colleagues from the Tiruchirappalli Centre Builders' Association of India decided to give themselves a well-deserved break in Kathmandu, little did they dream that the date with Mt Everest, the highest peak in the world, and Lord Pashupatinath, would lead to tragedy and mourning. 

The eight men as well as an Indian couple working for the UN in Kathmandu were among the 19 people killed in Kathmandu valley on Sunday morning when their mountain flight to view Mt Everest and other Himalayan ranges in the east ended in a crash in the Kotdanda village area in Lalitpur city, about 20 km away from the capital. 

"It was devastating," said Hari Thapa, a villager who was eyewitness to the crashing of the Buddha Air Beech aircraft. "The plane broke up and some of the bodies were badly mangled. There was blood and flesh everywhere and women and children, who ran out to see what had happened, began weeping in terror." 

Adding to the chaos, Nepal's aviation authorities initially released a wrong set of victims' names, reviving memories of another air crash last year when the victims, mostly Bhutanese pilgrims, were at first declared to be Nepalis. 

Finally, the Indian Embassy in Kathmandu released the correct names of the 10 Indian victims, who included a woman. 

They are Pankaj Mehta, who worked for the UN in Kathmandu, and his wife Chaya Mehta, and eight builders from Tamil Nadu's Trichy: K Thiyagarajan, RM Meenatchi Sundaram, Kattoov Mahalingam, D Hanasekaran, MV Maruthachalam, AK Krishnan, VM Kankasabesan and M Maniraran. 

"They checked into our hotel Saturday evening," said Furpa Sherpa, sales manager at Kathmandu's Grand Hotel. "They had come on a SpiceJet flight from Delhi and were to have left on Oct 27. We put them to a local travel agency, Losar Tours and Travels and they booked a mountain flight for Sunday morning." 

The flight took off from Kathmandu around 6.30am and was returning from the Everest region an hour later when it lost contact with the control room. Minutes later, it crashed, killing 18 people. The 19th, 36-year-old Nirajan Karmacharya, was rescued from the wreck by a team of locals and security personnel but died of his injuries while being treated at the B & B Hospital in Lalitpur. 

The dead included the three-member Nepali cabin crew of Captain J B Tamrakar, co-pilot Padma Adhikari and airhostess Asmita Shrestha. The others killed were two American tourists, Andrew Wade and Natalie Neilan, Japan's Uejima Toshinori and two Nepalis, Sarda Karmacharya and Jagjan Karmacharya. 

The bodies had been brought to Kathmandu's Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital for post mortem, the aviation authorities said. The Indian Embassy set up helplines for families and others to contact them for information. 

The hotlines are: 

            00-977-1-4423702 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting            00-977-1-4423702      end_of_the_skype_highlighting       [Direct] 

            00-977-1-4410900 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting            00-977-1-4410900      end_of_the_skype_highlighting       - Ext- 4109 

            00-977-1-4414990 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting            00-977-1-4414990      end_of_the_skype_highlighting       - Ext- 4109 

            00-977-1-4411699 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting            00-977-1-4411699      end_of_the_skype_highlighting       - Ext- 4109 

The Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal formed a three-member panel under former director-general Rajesh Raj Dali to probe the crash. The black box of the shattered aircraft has been found, police said. 

The crash could not have come at a worse time for Nepal that is observing tourism year 2011 with the aim of attracting 1 million tourists to revive its flagging economy. Indian tourists form the bulk of visitors in Nepal and Nepal Tourism Board has been organising promotional campaigns in Indian metros.