Hyderabad: Srinivas Kuchibotla, the Indian engineer who was killed last week in Kansas City, USA, in a suspected hate crime, will be cremated in Hyderabad on Tuesday.
His family will perform the last rites at Jubilee Hills crematorium at around at 11.30am.
His body will be flown in from the US later on Monday night. It will be accompanied by his wife Sunaina, brother, sister-in-law and a friend. Officials of the Indian and Telangana governments were in touch to ensure there was no delay.
From the airport the body will be driven to the family home at Dindigul in the outskirts of Hyderabad where Srinivas’ parents, who are in deep shock, reside. Family sources said that Sriniva’s father Madhusudhan Shastri has asked his younger son, who is also in the USA, to return to India.
The family home at Praneet Bounty Township wore a gloomy look as grief stricken family members and relatives gathered to make arrangements for the funeral.
“We were expecting Srinivas to visit Hyderabad in June. We never thought he would come back like this,” said one of his cousins. A framed portrait with two pictures of a smiling Srinvas was kept outside the home with a heap of red flowers as a mark of homage to the young man.
Union Ministers M Venkaiah Naidu and Bandaru Dattatreya and the state minister for Information Technology, K Taraka Rama Rao, had visited the family home on Sunday to console the bereaved family.
While the government of India had announced all the arrangements to bring the body home, media reports from Kansas say that a fund of $600,000 (Dh2,203,559) was raised for Srinivas and his family through crowdfunding. Another campaign raised $100,000 for Srinivas and his injured Indian friend, Alok Reddy Madasani. Another $30,000 was collected for Alok’s treatment and $400,000 for an American citizen, Grillot, who was injured while trying to save the Indian engineers.
