<i>Vacation turns disaster for family</i>
Severely injured 16 members of the owner family of Naseem Group arrived in Dhaka yesterday afternoon on a flight of GMG Airlines after burying five of their deceased loved ones who had been on a pleasure trip together to India, which ended in a fatal motor crash during their Eid vacation.
Seventeen of the 19-member Naseem Group family and four of a friend's family went on the pleasure trip to Delhi and Kashmir last month under the management of a tourist company, which ended in a road accident at Haldwani near Nainital district of Uttarkhand state while they were returning from Kashmir on October 22.
Meherunnessa, 70, her son Afsar Ali Khan, 34, and his wife Fouzia Afsar, 24, were killed on the spot, while 15-month old daughter of Afsar, Farza Khanam, and seven-year-old Rehib Ali Khan, son of Afsar's brother Nasir Ali Khan died in a hospital.
A cousin of Afsar and the bus driver, both residents of Delhi, also died on the spot.
The injured who made it back to Bangladesh are Shahid Ali Khan, chairman of Naseem Group, Rashid Ali Khan, director of Naseem Plastic Industries Ltd, their brothers Iqbal Ali Khan, Nasir Ali Khan and his wife Shakila Nasir, and 12 other members of the family, and the four members of their friend Ekramul Huq's family, the business partner of Naseem Group.
The deceased were buried in a graveyard in Haldwani 6 km off the accident spot.
Five of the injured got home on wheel chairs, while admission of Rafat to Birdem hospital in the capital was being contemplated, a member of Ekramul's family.
Rashid Ali told The Daily Star, "The tourist bus was speeding and it was late at night while we were asleep. We woke up around 1:45am to the noise of a loud blast and found ourselves trapped inside the bus."
After 40 minutes, police rescued them and rushed them to two nearby hospitals, he said adding, "Still we didn't know who among us were dead and who were injured."
Rashid also said Nasir Ali still did not know about the deaths of his family members including his wife and son. He was frantically looking for them at the airport yesterday and since then he was seemingly in a severe mental shock.
Some of the injured, who are able to talk, said nine of them including Ekramul's family members will have to stay admitted in hospitals for at least two months for treatment, according to the suggestions of Indian doctors.
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