Dubai: The body of a Sri Lankan national, who died in Saudi Arabia, will be flown into India on the request of his Indian wife as it has no takers in his home country, a news report has said.
Sri Lankan Consulate in Jeddah is making arrangements to repatriate the remains of expatriate worker Pasupathipillai Sivanandan who died of cardiac arrest while he was resting in his apartment after work, the Arab News report said.
Sivanandan, 65, who was working as a storekeeper at a hotel, was married to an Indian woman and his wife and two children live in Chennai. "There are no claimants for the remains from Sri Lanka," S D Moorthy, consul for labour welfare at the Indian Consulate in Jeddah, told the newspaper. He has been working in Saudi Arabia for 20 years.
"The Indian consulate has also got a request from the Sri Lankan Consulate in Jeddah for permission to transport the body to Chennai as pleaded by his wife Rukmani Devi," Moorthy said, adding that his consulate had taken up the matter with the Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi for approval.
Sri Lankan Consul General Athambawa Uthumalebbe said that the dead worker did not have any relatives back in Sri Lanka. "There was no one to receive his body in Colombo," the consul general said. He added that the body would be ferried as soon as the necessary documents were processed for clearance from the airport. Uthumalebbe also thanked the Indian Consulate in Jeddah for its cooperation to repatriate the body to India.
"It is an example of excellent bilateral relations between the two countries," he said. The management of the hotel is making arrangements to settle his salary dues, which will be sent to the bereaved family in India through the Sri Lankan mission. PTI