NMC bosses pay tribute to lost staff

The New Medical Centre was devastated by the deaths of three workers in the crash, the hospital's founder, Dr BR Shetty, said yesterday. They were Jayapraksha Devadiga, 33, an accounts assistant with the NMC hospital in Deira; Abdunnasir Avinja, 22, a merchandiser with NMC Trading Group; and Mannapadupu Ashraf Abdul Rehman, 44, from Chikmagalore, who worked as a store assistant at an NMC speciality hospital.

Indumathi Nayak, a cancer patient who was going home from one of the NMC hospitals in Dubai, was also killed. "My sincere condolences to those who have passed away," Dr Shetty said. "It is like a tragedy to our family," said Sudhir Shetty, the chief operating officer of the UAE Exchange, a money exchange company that is part of the NMC. "Mangalore is a small town with nearby places such as Kasargod and Udipi. A lot of people here are from there. It is a great tragedy that so many of our members have died. You have a lot of people here with their families because a lot of them are professionals."

Dr Shetty said he had been on the aircraft hours earlier when it flew from Mangalore to Dubai. He got home in Abu Dhabi at about 2.30am. "Within a couple hours of that, the crash happened," he said. "This is life." He had spoken to the crew members, he said. "They were so good to me, so hospitable," said Dr Shetty. "I even had a word with the co-pilot. We exchanged pleasantries and then, within hours, they were gone."

At Mr Devadiga's house in Udipi yesterday, his brother-in-law, Muddu Moily, co-ordinated phone calls while the rest of the family scoured hospitals for his body. He was one of five brothers and six sisters, and was unmarried. Some of his brothers, who live in Mumbai, were on their way to Mangalore. "He was coming home as a surprise, to enjoy the holidays with us," said Mr Moily. In Kasargod, Mr Avinja's family was in mourning after his brother, Mohammed, returned home from identifying his body.

Abdunnasir Avinja, one of three brothers, was going home to attend family weddings, including Mohammed's. Mohammed said he was at the airport waiting to meet his brother when he heard about the accident. "Others were coming on Wednesday," said Mohammed. "That is when he was supposed to come, but we asked him to come early." They last spoke just after Abdunnasir had boarded the plane. "He was joking, saying he had bought too many things for the wedding and was slightly overweight but they had let him through.

"His last words to me were, 'Everything is OK'." [e-mail]