Indian Expat Finally Buried Three Years After Death

An Indian expat whose dead body was lying in a morgue for over three years was finally buried in Dammam on Nov 16, Saudi Gazette reported.

According to the news report, Koya Moochi Kadavanpaikt, 54, died of a chronic illness in a private hospital in Al-Khobar in 2015. Soon after, authorities tried to reach out to his family in Kozhikode in Kerala where his family lived but failed due to a mismatch in credential in his passport. Since then, his mortal remains have remained in Saudi hospital.

His family was finally traced with the help of social media. The report said that his family was unaware of his death and was waiting for his return.

After Kadavanpaikt died, his body was sent to a government hospital morgue after nobody came to claim it. He had been a living in Saudi Arabia for 22 years, the publication reported.

Hospital and police authorities reached out to community social worker Nass Shoukat Ali Vokkam, to track down the man’s relatives.

He told the publication, “We ran a thorough search of Koya’s family back home in Kerala with the support of government officials as per the address mentioned in his passport but of no avail. Even extensive media coverage failed to trace family members of the deceased. Then we sought the help of social media that yielded positive results. One person in Al-Khobar identified the deceased as Hasanair Kunji hailing from Kasargod district bordering Karnataka state. We were able to trace the family and obtained legal consent for his burial in the Kingdom.”

His family was unaware of his death. “The family was unaware that he was dead. His mother even postponed marriages of her three sons, insisting that they should be married only in the presence of their elder brother,” the publication noted.

Unfortunately, the mother too died in the meantime without the knowledge of her son’s death.

Last year, a report revealed that as many as 31,318 Indians have lost their lives abroad since 2014, and nearly one-third of these deaths were reported in Saudi Arabia, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said on Dec. 20 in response to a question in the Lok Sabha.

Since 2014, 10,424 Indians have died in Saudi Arabia, of which 2,537 were reported in 2017, VK Singh, the Minister of State for External Affairs, said. The corresponding number in the UAE since 2014 is 6,173, while the number of Indians who died in Kuwait in the same period is 2,310.