KOCHI: For the parents of Sreehari S, who died earlier this week in a mid-air collision involving two single-engine training aircraft, the wait for his mortal remains is proving to be agonising. According to Sreehari’s relatives, his family has received no details from the Indian high commission in Canada regarding repatriation of the body.
A 23-year-old student pilot, Sreehari was at the helm of one of the two Cessna planes involved in the incident as part of his training for a commercial pilot’s licence. The July 8 crash also claimed the life of Savanna May Royes, a 20-year-old Canadian student pilot. It was Sreehari’s lifelong dream to become a pilot and he had been in Canada for the past one and a half years, said Deepesh Chandran, his uncle. “Sreehari was home last November to visit his grandmother, who was battling cancer. He returned in February after her death.”
“Nobody knows what happened. The instructor said the collision happened during a training manoeuvre. It wasn’t a head-on crash,” said Deepesh. He said the body will be moved to a funeral home in Canada after police procedures. Before moving to Canada,
According to him, the Canada Malayalee Association is assisting with all the necessary procedures.
It is understood that the Transportation Safety Board of Canada has launched a probe, which will take at least a year to complete.
Sreehari was a student of Global Public School (GPS) till Class 10, before moving to Rajagiri Public School for his 11th and 12th grades. According to Lakshmi Ramachandran, dean of GPS, Sreehari was a very humble yet jovial student. “He always talked about flying,” she said, adding that his death has come as a shock to his teachers and friends. Meanwhile, the Kerala government’s special representative in Delhi, Prof K V Thomas, wrote to External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar seeking urgent intervention to expedite Sreehari’s postmortem procedures.
Prof Thomas, who visited Sreehari’s parents in Tripunithura on Friday, also requested that the Acting High Commissioner of India in Canada, Chinmoy Naik, be instructed to obtain necessary permissions from local government bodies in Canada and complete the documentation process quickly. Sreehari is survived by his father Sukesh, mother Deepa and sister Samyukta.