Indian widow seeks return of husband’s body from Riyadh

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The family of an Indian expatriate who died in Saudi Arabia following a heart attack over two months back is still waiting for his body.
The body of Koshy Unnunni, 53, a truck driver working in Riyadh, is in a morgue, and his wife, Shanthamma, has said that the Indian authorities have failed to respond to her pleas.
The family lost contact with Unnunni on July 10. After 45 days, and several telephone calls to his colleagues, a social worker informed them that he could finally trace his body to a morgue in Riyadh.
The autopsy report says he died following a heart attack as his blood pressure went down, Shanthamma said. “Our only wish is to get his body soon and perform the last rites,” she said. “His mother is 89, and is ailing. Her only wish is to see his body before her death”.
The widow was working as a cook with a local banana chips maker in Thazhakkara village of Kerala’s Alleppey district. The couple’s two sons, aged 20 and 24, work in Bahrain and Bangalore.
She said: “All us have since quit our jobs and are waiting for his body to arrive home, with prayers. With no money left, what else we could do?”
Unnunni had come to Saudi Arabia in December 2014, and all his earnings were spent to settle the debts, she said.
Shanthamma said her husband wanted to come back as he was ill and that their sons had started working. He had gone to Batha to collect his return ticket. The last call she received from him was to tell her that he was back in his room; and he went missing after that.
Last year, the government unveiled an online system, http://moia.gov.in/index.aspx, which enables families to track the transportation of bodies of their relatives from abroad. The online applications are processed by the Indian missions in Malaysia, Jordan, the UAE, Yemen, Lebanon, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, Iraq, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Libya, Sudan, Syria and Thailand.
Shanthamma says she had also registered online with the help of a relative, but is yet to receive a reply.