Remains Of Plane Crash Victims Cremated, Buried Hindu, Muslim And Christian Clerics Oversee Services For Unclaimed Bodies

The ashes of a Hindu funeral pyre and the prayers of Muslim and Christian clergy wafted into village skies at dusk Thursday in mass ceremonies for victims of a jet collision over India.

Authorities cremated or buried 94 of the 349 people killed in Tuesday’s crash, saying they did not have the facilities to keep so many bodies much longer. The 94 bodies had not yet been identified by relatives.

Many of the victims were laborers headed to jobs in Saudi Arabia, and word of the accident was slow to reach their families in remote parts of rural India. Of the 317 bodies pulled from the wreckage by Thursday evening, only 113 had been claimed from the hospital at Charkhi Dadri, the accident site about 60 miles southwest of New Delhi.

The collision of a Saudi airliner taking off from New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport and an arriving Kazak cargo plane was the third-deadliest crash in aviation history.

Officials had asked clerics to examine the corpses to try to determine which were Hindu, Muslim and Christian. They declined such a grisly task, agreeing among themselves to simply determine from the passenger lists what percentage of victims were likely to fall into each religion, and divide the 94 accordingly.

“Whether we are Hindus, Muslims or Christians, it doesn’t matter. We are all the same. We are the children of God,” said Indu Yadav, a local teacher who attended the Hindu and Muslim ceremonies.

Hundreds of villagers attended the cremations and burials. Sikh and Hindu priests officiated at the cremation in a field just outside Charkhi Dadri, while Muslim clergy led prayers in a mosque across town. Three bodies were buried with Christian prayers at the nearest Christian church, about 20 miles away.

Kazakstan Airlines officials were making arrangements to return the 37 passengers on the Kazak flight to the former Soviet republic later this week.

Police said 73 bodies were intact enough to be identified and would be held a few more days. Although they had at first planned to cremate or bury any body remaining after Thursday afternoon, they relented after hearing that some relatives were still on the way.

Searchers were to search the wreckage again Friday, hoping to recover the last 32 bodies.

On Thursday, a high court judge officially took over the investigation into the cause of the collision.