Kids survive crash that killed 15

One of the Indian girls who survived the crash receives treatment at a hospital in Pokhara. (Reuters)

May 14: Thirteen Indian pilgrims were among 15 persons killed today in an air crash in northern Nepal, the survivors including two sisters from Chennai aged six and nine who have lost their mother while their father lies unconscious and critically ill in hospital.

The Dornier 9N AIG aircraft, belonging to private airline Agni Air, had taken off around 9.30am from the resort town of Pokhara with three crew members and 18 passengers, who were to visit the pilgrim centre of Muktinath in Jomsom, 200km northwest of Kathmandu.

Kathmandu airport sources said the small plane crashed at an altitude of 9,000ft just behind the Jomsom Mountain Resort Hotel near the airport, its right wing hitting a hilltop just as it turned left to divert back to Pokhara because of a technical snag.

The tragedy comes less than eight months after 10 Indians and nine others were killed near Kathmandu when a small plane crashed while returning from an Everest sightseeing trip. The victims included a doctor couple formerly based in Calcutta.

Pilots Prabhu Sharan Pathak and J.D. Maharjan died in today’s crash while three Indians, two Danes and 32-year-old airhostess Roshni Haiju survived.

“Please come and take us home; we don’t know where amma and appa are,” sobbed Sreepada, 6, one of the Indian survivors, over the phone to her uncle K. Srinivasan in Chennai.

Neither she nor elder sister Srivardhini, 9, were aware that their mother Latha, 30, had died and their father, Tirumala Kadambhi Srikanth, 36, was battling severe injuries in a different ward of the Manipal Hospital in Pokhara.

“He is suffering fits. A CT scan revealed nothing. We have administered drugs and his condition has improved a little,” a hospital official said about the senior analyst with Infosys, adding that he was still critical.

Sreepada later had surgery on a fractured thighbone and was under sedation. Sreevardhini is at the neuro ICU.

“She has suffered an injury to her right eye, where there is a clot, and several bruises. She is stable and under observation,” an ICU doctor told The Telegraph. “There are a number of Indians working at the hospital and many of them visited her. Some brought food for her.”

Srikanth had returned from the US five years ago so that his daughters could imbibe Chennai’s culture. The family had travelled to Nepal for sightseeing three days ago after spending four days in Delhi.

Srikanth’s parents, who had gone to Tirupati on their annual pilgrimage, are rushing back to Chennai. “Srikanth’s brother and Latha’s brother are going to Delhi and will travel to Nepal from there,” said Srinivasan, a bank officer married to Latha’s sister.(TT)