An Indian Air Force (IAF) aircraft carrying the bodies of 46 Indians who died in a fire in an apartment building in Kuwait landed at the Cochin International Airport in Kerala at 10.30 am, officials said.
The mortal remains of the victims from Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka are being received in Kochi by their respective state governments and taken to their homes. The flight will then leave for Delhi with the bodies of the victims from other states.
Twenty-three of the 46 victims are from Kerala, seven from Tamil Nadu, four from Uttar Pradesh, three from Andhra Pradesh and two each from Bihar and Odisha. The victims also include one person each from Jharkhand, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Punjab and West Bengal.
Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, Cabinet colleagues and senior government officials from the Department of Non-Resident Keralites Affairs or NORKA will receive the bodies at the airport. Later, ambulances with police escort will transport the bodies to the native places of the victims, who hail from various parts of Kerala.
The victims include young engineering graduates who had flown to Kuwait just a few days ago for their first job, and men in their 40s who decided to work in the foreign country in order to give a better life to their wife and children back home. Most of them, their families said, were aiming to return soon after putting together enough money to build a house of their own or fulfil other financial commitments.
The blaze in the seven-storey building that housed 196 migrant workers in Mangaf, south of Kuwait City, on Wednesday killed 49 people and injured around 50 others. A preliminary probe has indicated glaring lapses – there were around two dozen gas cylinders on the ground floor of the building; inflammable materials were used as partitions to separate the workers in the cramped rooms; the doors to the rooftop were locked, etc.
