Title - Last journey for newly-wed couple

It was the last journey for engineer Kopuri Venkata Ramana and his wife Pallavi, who had travelled in the ill-fated Tamil Nadu Express on Sunday night.

The victim’s brother, K. Nagaraju, brought the two bodies to the village on Tuesday. Officials, however, did not hand over Pallavi’s relative Nagarani’s body, as it was charred beyond recognition and needed DNA test for identification.

The family members performed the last rites and gloom descended on the entire village.

A native of the village in Penuganchiprolu mandal, Ramana got married six months ago.

The couple was proceeding to Chennai to vacate the room, as Ramana had been selected as an executive in Central services. His aunt I. Nagarani had also accompanied them.

“Ramana did mechanical engineering and joined in a private company. He was about to shift to Bangalore. Pallavi completed MCA and was on the lookout for a job”, said Ramana’s elder brother K. Ramesh.

“Ramana was the only person who studied and got a good job in our family. The entire family was depended on him”, Ramana’s mother Krishna Kumari said.

In a related development, the body of Surapaneni Jaswani, who was working as a software professional, another accident victim, also arrived. Her friends, relatives, and neighbours thronged Jaswani’s house at Kanuru and the family members were seen weeping inconsolably.

Meanwhile, the South Central Railway announced that 28 passengers boarded the New Delhi-Chennai Central Tamil Nadu Express, at the Vijayawada station.

But, the officials confirmed only five deaths in the fire mishap and a few were undergoing treatment in various hospitals.

The rest of the passengers were missing and the fate of the unreserved passengers who were in the S-11 coach is not known.

Many passengers, who boarded the train in Vijayawada from the neighbouring villages in Krishna, West and East Godavari districts, are yet to be traced.

“Only five bodies were handed over to the families concerned and the identity of the other victims can be established only after collecting samples from the charred remains of the bodies”, said an SCR official.