At 7.40 p.m., close to three hours after they arrived at Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital, the family of 24-year-old TCS employee Parchuri Swathi received her body.
A post-mortem examination had been conducted, following which the State government’s free hearse van was used to take the body by road to Guntur, Andhra Pradesh. Swathi’s father, Paruchuri Ramakrishna, and her younger brother travelled by the hearse, while the rest of the family, including her mother, Kamatchidevi, followed in cars, her uncle, R. Srinivasan, said.
“Usually, the mortuary van does not travel from Tamil Nadu to other States. But this being an extraordinary case, we made the necessary arrangement,” said a senior health department official.
The family reside in Shree Nagar, Guntur, and had left for Chennai on hearing the news, arriving around 4 p.m. “The entire family is distraught. Swathi was on her way home from Bangalore, where she worked, as it was May Day and there was a long weekend ahead. It would have been a four-day holiday and her family was waiting to see her,” Mr. Srinivasan said.
Swathi had trained in Kerala before going to Bangalore four-and-a-half months ago, he said. “She was engaged to be married and the wedding was to take place in July,” he said.
Swathi was her parent’s only daughter. Her younger brother, Pawan, is doing his B.Tech in Mumbai, Mr. Srinivasan said. Her mother is a college professor, and her father, an agriculturalist.
