JOIN US Tragic silence engulfed the second floor flat of the Pals in Hebbal on Wednesday as news of Souvik Pal's death reached the family.
An inconsolable Mahuya Pal, mother of Souvik Pal, made an impassioned appeal to the External Affairs Ministry to help Shantanu Pal, her husband, who is alone in Manchester, to bring her son's body home as soon as possible.
Rudra Roy, family friend of the Pals, said Shantanu Pal had been informed by the authorities in Manchester that it would take at least five working days for all the formalities to be completed and the body to be sent home.
Though the post mortem is completed, the body is to be subjected to toxicological tests and certain forensic examinations. Later, the body has to be embalmed and sent back home, sources said.
“Taking into account the weekend, that would almost mean more than a week. It is inhuman to make the mother here wait for such a long time to see her son.
We demand that the Indian authorities intervene and speed up the process. We request that Souvik's body be brought back home at least by the weekend,” Rudra Roy said.
Alok Ranjan Pal and his wife Sandhya Rani Pal, grandparents of Souvik Pal, broke down speaking to the media.
Alok Ranjan Pal said Souvik was a brilliant student and had earned a scholarship from Manchester Metropolitan University.
He was also working part time at a restaurant and with the Manchester United football team to meet his study expenses.
Souvik was not the kind of person who would get into brawls, the grandfather said.
Expressing concern over the safety of other Indian students, he said, though there was hate crime in Manchester against an Indian student in December 2011, the Indian government had issued no travel advisory cautioning students seeking to study there.
He said in the light of many such incidents, he would appeal to the Centre to evolve a system whereby Indian students studying abroad are provided adequate security.