Special IAF aircraft takes off for India with the bodies of 25 pilgrims who died in a tragic bus accident in Nepal

Kathmandu: A special Indian Air Force flight carrying the bodies of 25 Indian pilgrims who died in a tragic bus accident in Nepal left for Jalgaon in Maharashtra on Saturday after completing all formalities.

The bodies of the two deceased would arrive in Maharajgunj in Uttar Pradesh on Saturday evening.

Twenty-five pilgrims from Maharashtra and two people from Uttar Pradesh who were on a 10-day trip to Nepal were killed and 16 others injured when their bus veered off the highway and plunged into the fast-flowing Marsyangdi river near Abu Khaireni in Tanahun district of central Nepal on Friday.

The dead man and the injured man were part of a group of 104 pilgrims who visited Nepal in three buses.

Sources in the Indian Embassy here said that Minister of State for Youth Affairs and Sports Raksha Nikhil Khadse and Sanjay Savkare, a member of the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly from Bhusawal constituency, arrived in Kathmandu early in the morning on a scheduled flight to oversee the return of the victims and survivors.

The IAF special flight reached Bharatpur, which is about 170 km away.

“The minister met the injured at a hospital in Kathmandu and then flew to Bharatpur on a domestic flight. The IAF flight carrying Khadse, Savkare and 25 bodies took off from Bharatpur for India,” the sources said.

“Will reach Jalgaon airport at 7 pm along with the mortal remains of the 25 people from Jalgaon who died in a tragic bus accident in Nepal. Requesting all bereaved families to cooperate and not to allow any inconvenience,” Khadse posted on X before leaving Bharatpur where the postmortem of the bodies was conducted.

The bodies of two people – the bus driver and his assistant of the ill-fated bus involved in the accident – and 51 other people from the rest of the group are expected to reach Maharajganj, a district in Uttar Pradesh state near the India-Nepal border, by road later on Saturday evening.

“They will then be taken to Gorakhpur under police protection and supervision of another district magistrate,” officials there said, adding that the district administration has made food and other necessary arrangements for all passengers at the border.

The cause of the accident is still unclear. The accident site is on the national highway, around 90 km west of Kathmandu.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has announced an ex-gratia donation of Rs 200,000 from the Prime Minister's National Relief Fund for the next of kin of all those who died in the accident in Tanahun district of Nepal. The injured would receive Rs 50,000, the prime minister said on X.

Earlier, the autopsy of all 27 Indians was performed on the same day at Bharatpur Hospital in Chitwan district of Bagmati province, said Home Ministry spokesman Narayan Prasad Bhattarai.

Khadse, accompanied by Savkare, along with Nepal's Home Minister Ramesh Lekhak, visited the Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital in Maharajgunj, Kathmandu, and met the 16 injured passengers who were being treated there.

“I thanked His Majesty and the Government of Nepal for their prompt and timely assistance in the search and rescue operations and in treating the injured,” Khadse said in a post on X after the hospital visit.

She also thanked the Indian Embassy in Nepal for the “necessary support and coordination on the ground with the Nepalese authorities.” According to hospital reports, one of the 16 injured is in critical condition, while the others are stable.

“In a bus accident involving tourists from India, some people lost their lives while others were saved only due to the hard work and dedication of our security forces. They included personnel from the Nepal Army, Nepal Police and Armed Police Force who joined the rescue work soon after the incident,” Lekhak told reporters after inspecting the medical ward.

He gave Khadse all information about the damage, rescue efforts and treatment of the injured in the bus accident and assured her that the Nepalese government would do everything possible to ensure a speedy recovery of the injured passengers.

The Indian minister expressed his gratitude for the Nepali government's effective management, from rescue work to treatment, praised the doctors for their active role and thanked the security personnel and all those involved in the rescue efforts, said Home Ministry spokesman Narayan Prasad Bhattarai.

Meanwhile, Nepal's Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli described the bus accident as “tragic” and expressed his condolences in a post on X: “I am deeply saddened by the tragic bus accident in Abu Khaireni, Tanahun, in which 27 Indian nationals lost their lives en route from Pokhara to Kathmandu. My deepest condolences to the victims and their families including Prime Minister Shri @narendramodi ji.” On Friday, it took members of the Nepal Police, Armed Police and Nepal Army nearly seven hours to rescue the injured and recover the dead passengers from the accident site.

The victims were from Varangaon, Daryapur, Talvel and Bhusaval in Jalgaon district, 470 km from Mumbai. The buses from Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh were on their way from Pokhara to Kathmandu when one of them crashed.