8 of two Kerala families choke to death in Nepal

Thiruvananthapuram/ Kathmandu: Eight members of two families from Kerala, who were on a vacation in Nepal, died in their sleep at a resort on Tuesday in what police officials are describing as “a gas leak from a heater in their room”.

The deceased include four children.

Reports say that the victims were found unconscious in a resort in Daman of Makwanpur district on Tuesday morning.

A helicopter was requisitioned from Kathmandu in which all eight were flown to the Institute of Advanced Medicine and Surgery in the Nepalese capital. One of the doctors at the institute said the four adults and four children who were brought to the hospital showed no signs of life.

According to the manager at the resort, although they had booked a total of four rooms, eight of them stayed in one room and remaining others in another room. He said they had turned on a gas heater to keep themselves warm.

The group was returning from Pokhara and had stopped at the Everest Panorama Resort in Daman, a popular tourist destination located at an altitude of nearly 2,500 metres above the sea level. The temperature at the tourist destination on Monday was 3° Celsius.

Makwanpur police superintendent Sushil Singh Rathore said the victims may have used gas heaters to warm their room which could have choked them to death. “We are investigating the matter,” he added.

According to officials at the ministry of external affairs, the deceased have been identified as Praveen Krishnan Nair (39), his wife Saranya Sasi (34), daughters Sreebadra Praveen (9), Archa Praveen and son Abhinav Saranya Nair (9).

Ranjit Kumar T.B. (39), his wife Indu Lakshmi Peethambaran (34), and son Vaishnav Ranjith (2). The only survivor was their son Madhav.

The two families belonged to Thiruvananthapuram and Kozhikode districts respectively.

While Praveen was working as an engineer in Dubai, Ranjith, who was employed in Thiruvannathapuram techopark earlier, was running his own venture.

“Deeply distressed by the tragic news of the passing away of eight Indian tourists in Nepal,” external affairs minister S. Jaishankar tweeted.

Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan expressed shock at the tragic incident and said the state government has requested the external affairs ministry to extend all help to the relatives of the deceased in getting the post-mortem examination and other formalities completed.

Minister of state for external affairs V. Muraleedharan said that officials at the Indian high commission were taking steps to bring the bodies back to India as early as possible.