Kerala revenue official ‘insults' nurse who died in Ahmedabad Air India crash, suspended
The Kerala government on Friday suspended a senior revenue department official for allegedly making insulting comments about nurse Ranjitha Gopakumaran, who was killed in Thursday's plane crash near Ahmedabad airport.
Revenue Minister K Rajan suspended A Pavithran, deputy tehsildar of Vellarikundu taluk in Kerala's Kasaragod district, and called his Facebook post about the nurse 'heinous'. He said the suspension was ordered as soon as the official's post came to the government's notice.
In the now-deleted Facebook post, Pavithran allegedly made casteist and obscene comments regarding Ranjitha, who worked as a nurse in the United Kingdom. When the comments started being widely circulated, the official withdrew them.
Ranjitha, a nurse who was originally from Pathanamthitta district, was returning to the UK where she had been working for around a year, when the plane she was travelling in met with the accident.
She is survived by her husband, Vineesh, two school-going children, and her mother, Thulasi.
According to panchayat member Johnson Thomas, 'Ranjitha came home from the UK three days ago. She got the job of a nurse in the health service there, but had come home on a short leave to oversee the construction of her new house.'
Since she moved to the UK around a year ago, she had been wanting to complete her job contract there. 'She planned to return to Kerala and work with the state health service,' the panchayat member said.
Air India flight AI-171 with 242 people on board crashed into a residential area near the Ahmedabad airport minutes after take-off on Thursday afternoon. It was headed to London from Ahmedabad. According to officials, only one of those on board survived. Several people on the ground, including students at a medical college dining hall that the plane crashed into, have also died or have been injured.
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