Bodies of eight members of the Tiruchi Centre of the Builders Association of India (BAI) who died in Sunday's air crash in Kathmandu, were brought here in ambulances from Chennai on Wednesday.
The bodies were kept on the National College Higher Secondary School grounds near Chinthamani for the public to pay homage.
Hundreds of people from different walks of life paid their last respects.
The bodies of M.V. Maruthachalam, A.K. Krishnan, V.M. Kanagasabesan, R.M. Meenakshisundaram, Kattur R. Mahalingam, G. Thyagarajan, M. Manimaran and T. Dhanasekaran had earlier been airlifted from Nepal to New Delhi.
The bodies arrived around 7.00 am and were kept here for about one-and-a-half hours before being handed over to family members for performing the last rites.
“This is a huge and irreparable loss to the construction industry. We are helpless before the will of God,” observed A.K.Youssouf, former national president, BAI.
Many of major builders were yet to recover from the shock. “This is a sudden loss and it is shocking beyond words,” said N. Venkatramani, one of the senior flat promoters in the city.
“All these had good standing in the industry. I had worked with Kanagasabesan at the Regional Engineering College (now National Institute of Technology),” recalled J. Ramanan, an architect and founder of the Science and Adventure Club, which organises annual expeditions to the Himalayas. The victims shared a common love for travel.
P. Kumar, MP, who had accompanied the relatives of the victims to Nepal, N.R. Sivapathi, Animal Husbandry Minister, and former Ministers E.V. Velu and N. Selvaraj were among those who paid their respects.
