Eight tourists from Kerala, including four children, died in a resort in Nepal’s Daman on Tuesday, 21 January. The tourists reportedly died due to suffocation after they used a gas heater in their hotel room.
Their bodies are undergoing postmortem in Kathmandu as of Wednesday and will be flown back home on Thursday, PTI reported, quoting a senior Indian official as saying.
The eight deceased – two couples and four children – hail from Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala and had traveled to Nepal on a holiday. They were traveling to Pokhara to take a flight back to India and had made a stop at the resort for the night.
They had booked two rooms at the Everest Panorama Resort in in Makwanpur district.
Police sources told The Quint that they were taken to a hospital, where they were declared dead.
Superintendent Sushil Singh Rathore of Makwanpur police said the Indians might have used gas heaters to warm their room which could have suffocated them to death.
Kerala CM Vijayan, EAM Jaishankar Express Grief
Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan expressed “deep grief” over the incident, news agency PTI reported.
“Deeply distressed by tragic news of passing away of eight Indian tourists in Nepal. Our Embassy in Nepal has been closely following the situation. Embassy officials are stationed at the hospital and providing necessary assistance,” said External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar.
What Happened in Nepal
According to the Kathamandu Post, the resort staff had called police after they found the tourists unconscious in their room. Although they had booked a total of four rooms, eight of them stayed in one room while the remaining chose to stay in another, the manager said. He added that all the windows and doors of the room were bolted from the inside.
When the other tourists noticed that none of them had come out of their rooms, they raised alarm and the hotel used a duplicate key to go in. Upon entering, hotel authorities found them all in an unconscious state.
The Indians have been identified as Prabin Kumar Nayar, 39, Sharanya, 34, Ranjit Kumar TB, 39, Indu Ranjit, 34, Shree Bhadra, 9, Abinab Soraya, 9, Abi Nayar 7, and Baishnab Ranjit, 2.
According to a statement released by HAMS Hospital in Kathmandu, “a total of 8 people were brought via helicopter on two separate occasions today (first at 10.40 AM, and next on 11.30 AM) from Daman, Nepal. Of them two were adult males, two adult females and remaining four were children – 2 males, 2 females.”
“On arrival, to HAMS Hospital, none of them had any signs of life and were declared dead. We are in touch with the Indian Embassy and Nepal police for further legal formalities.”HAMS Hospital, Kathmandu
HAMS Hospital, Kathmandu where the tourist were airlifted to and declared dead after being found in the hotel room.
(Photo: ANI)
Vellamvelly Muraleedharan, Union Minister of State for External Affairs & Parliamentary Affairs also spoke about the deaths.
“The doubt is that they suffocated because of the carbon monoxide from the heater. The postmortem will be conducted at the hospital. They will be brought to Kerala at the earliest,” he said.
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