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Air crash victims hard to identify
KATHMANDU, AUG 25 -
The bodies of the three crew members—Captain Laxman Prakash Shah, Co-Pilot Sophia Singh and flight attendant Sarah Sherpa—who were killed in the Makwanpur plane crash, were handed over to their relatives on Wednesday.
Doctors handed over the bodies to the relatives after identification following the examination of their remains. “The rest of the bodies are yet to be identified,” said Dr. Pramod Shrestha, of TU Teaching Hospital.
According to Shrestha, doctors involved in the bodies’ examination are facing difficulty in identifying the dead persons as the bodies have shattered into more than 150 fragments.
“In a discussion with doctors relatives of the deceased could not decide whether the dismembered bodies should be taken abroad for DNA testing,” Dr. Shrestha added. The doctors have also appealed to the police to fetch foreign specialists for the identification process as they failed to complete the task due to lack of forensic technology in the country. According to Pramod Pandey, Marketing Manager of Agni Air, their aircraft took the family members of the deceased to the crash site on Wednesday. “An internal investigation panel is being formed by Agni Air to probe the incident,” said Shrestha.
Meanwhile, officials have said that the official investigation hasn’t started yet. “The investigation will hopefully be start from Thursday,” said Laxman Prasad Sharma, Spokesperson and Joint Secretary of the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN).
CAAN formed an investigation committee headed by aviation expert Kumar Prasad Upadhyaya on Tuesday. The members of the committee are Rajan Pokhrel, Rajendra Man Shakya, Suresh Acharya, and Sarada Bhakta Rajbhandari.
Meanwhile, a security team has stepped up search of the remaining parts of the crashed plane. “The team is drying up water in the site and searching for the remaining parts of the plane,” said SP Ram Prasad Shrestha.
Fourteen persons, including three crew members, were killed in the Agni Air plane crash in Makwanpur on Tuesday.
Posted on: 2010-08-26 08:19
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