Anxious relatives of Indians on the missing Malaysian plane waiting for information

Beijing: Relatives of five Indian passengers, travelling by the missing Malaysia Airlines plane, are anxiously waiting for any information about the fate of the aircraft and their loved ones. Samved Kolekar, whose father, mother and brother were travelling by the Flight MH370 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing is waiting patiently along with his wife at a hotel here along with relatives of 154 Chinese passengers. It is a testing time for the young researcher in Astrophysics as he is waiting to know about his parents and brother who were coming here to visit him. [caption id=“attachment_1426155” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Representational image. Reuters[/caption] “They are coming to visit me here,” Samved, who hails from Mumbai, told PTI. Considering the tough time he is going through, he was reluctant to interact with the media and provide more details. His father, Vinod Kolekar (59), mother Chetana (55) and their younger brother Swanand (23) were in the plane along with two other Indians Chandrika Sharma (51) and Kranti Pralhad Shirshath, whose husband is based in Pyongyang in North Korea. Both Samved and Pralhad are put up in a hotel here by the Malaysian airline as search continued to locate the plane carrying 239 passengers and crew amid reports that it may have been crashed off Vietnamese coast yesterday. Indian Ambassador to China Ashok K Kantha spoke to both Samved and Pralhad over phone and offered all assistance, while Counsellor Shrila Dutta Kumar met them. M H Pastakia, Head of the Indian Community in Beijing, also called on Samved and offered all support and assistance. As the search operation made little progress, the Malaysia Airlines meanwhile offered to fly both the families to Kuala Lumpur along with the relatives of 154 Chinese passengers in order to provide them better assistance at the headquarters. They have not yet decided and preferred to wait for the news about the fate of the plane. Family members of Chennai-based Chandrika Sharma, an Executive Secretary in the International Collective in Support of Fishworkers (ICSF) who was also travelling in the same plane on way to Mongolia on official work, were expected to reach here or Kuala Lumpur after an official announcement about the fate of the plane. PTI