Relatives of Dharapuram student who drowned in Russia peition Tirupur Collector to bring body home
Tirupur: Relatives of a Dharapuram student who drowned in Russia filed a petition at the Collector's Office this morning demanding that the body of a medical college student from the Dharapuram area who drowned in Russia be brought to Tamil Nadu.
Stephen from Chennai, Mohammad Ashiq from Dharapuram, Ramu Vignesh and Manoj Anand from Thoothukudi studied medicine at the Medical University in Volgograd, Russia. They stayed with Tamil Nadu students at the Medical University hostel there. The day before yesterday, they went to the Volga river with more than 10 Tamil students to bathe in the river.
Stephen saw a student being swept away in the water, jumped in and tried to save him. On seeing the two struggling, two more students entered the river to save them, but all the four students, Stephen, Mohammad Ashiq, Ramu Vignesh and Manoj Anand, were swept away. A few hours later, their bodies were washed ashore.
Police retrieved the bodies and sent them for autopsy. The incident has caused great grief among the families and friends of the deceased. Under the circumstances, Aashiq's relatives filed a petition at the Tirupur District Collector's Office this morning requesting that Mohammad Aashiq's body be brought back from Russia to Dharapuram, his hometown.