THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The painful wait of Manikuttan’s family finally ended on Wednesday, when the mortal remains of the city-based engineer, who died in a blast that occurred on board a vessel in which he worked off the coast of Nigeria on September 4, were finally brought home after 24 days. He was cremated at Thycaud Santhi Kavadom at 11.15 am. The body arrived at Thiruvananthapuram International Airport at 9 am and was handed over to his relatives around 10 am. Hundreds thronged Manikuttan’s house ‘Kairali’ at Bhagavathy Nagar, near Kowdiar, to pay their last respects to the 31-year-old. Manikuttan was the youngest of the seven sons of the couple Bhaskaran Nair and Saraswathy Amma. He had met with an unfortunate end, along with four other crew members, in the blast. The accident occurred while he was preparing to return after his six-month-long contract with the shipping company was scheduled to end on September 26. His death was confirmed by his employers four days later when they recovered his body. However, the repatriation process got delayed as all of a sudden the company for which he worked showed no interest in owning up the responsibility of the ship. Shashi Tharoor MP had visited the family of Manikuttan and offered all help, not only using his authority as MP, but also the personal contacts he had gained as diplomat, in speeding up the repatriation process. Former minister M Vijayakumar, K Muraleedharan MLA, CPM district secretary Kadakampally Surendran and Mayor K Chandrika attended the funeral. Meanwhile, the Director General of Shipping, India, too found that discrepancies existed in the credentials of the ship and the statements provided by the captain of the ship, following which the Directorate requested the Nigerian maritime authorities to conduct a detailed probe into the matter. The mortal remains of the other crew members, who hailed from other Indian states, too were brought back from Nigeria on Wednesday.
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