Fly ends with sorrow
Five of the 15 Indians who were on board the Kenyan airliner that crashed in Cameroon belonged to two families even as relatives waited anxiously to have the latest information on the fate of the passengers.Kevin Joseph Niglie (55) and his school teacher wife, Sherly Niglie (52), who are from Kerala, left Cameroon two years back and were coming to India to visit their children in Bangalore.Initially it was reported that there were 14 Indian passengers in the ill-fated aircraft.Tha list of Indian passengers released by the Indian High Commission in Nairobi as provided by Kenyan Airways indicated that another three passengers may be from one family.They were identified as Madhusudhan, Bhagya Madhusudhan and Poojitha Madhusudhan. No details were available.
The passengers on the ill-fated aircraft also included 25-year-old Amol Chauhan, director of Parle Products, who was on a business trip to Africa.Some details were also available in the case of three more passengers. They were Nalakath Gireeshan (53) from Thalaserry (Kerala), Gracey Manuel (55) and Kocherry George Joseph (57), both from Valparai in Coimbatore district. Gireeshan was coming to Kerala on his way to Mumbai to attend a family function.Joseph, who was working in the Murdis estate in Valparai, had left for Kenya two years ago while Gracey had gone to see her son, working in Kenya.The other six Indian passengers were identified as Maria Joseph, Aman Gaur, Meera Shah, Inder Deep, Prakash Sundaram and david Kenneth John. Further details were not immediately available.
Ms Jackqualine Rodrigues and Mr Aedren Rodrigues from Kochi, who are close relatives of the Niglie couple, said they were yet to receive any information about them.Ms Jackqualine told reporters here that two brothers of Sherly, who is her cousin, have gone to the accident spot on hearing about the crash yesterday.The two were to reach Bangalore to be with their children by next week, they said.Kevin, who was a field officer in a tea plantation at Valpara in Kerala, had shifted to Cameroon two years back along with his wife, a school teacher. Sherly was earlier working as a teacher in a matriculation school at Valparai. The couple later settled down in Ivory Coast after Kevin got a job in an estate there, family sources said.Gireeshan’s relatives said he was to come to Kerala next week and the entire family were to go to Mumbai to attend a family function.