Businessman Ashok Kumar Tripathi and his separated wife based in Thane Vaibhavi Bandekar Tripathi He was on a reunion trip to the Himalayan country with his children, son Dhanush (22) and daughter Ritika (15), when the accident happened on Sunday.
Ashok Tripathi (54), who ran a company in Odisha, and Vaibhavi Tripathi (51), who worked in a financial firm in Mumbai, was separated following court orders, an officer from Thane’s Kapurbawdi police station said on Monday.
As per the court order, the family was to be together for 10 days a year and this year they had planned a trip to Nepal. His plane belonging to the private Tara Air went missing minutes after it took off from the tourist town of Pokhara in Nepal’s mountainous region on Sunday morning.
Apart from the four Indian nationals, there were two Germans and 13 Nepalese passengers on board besides the three-member Nepalese crew. Rescuers have so far pulled out 20 bodies from the wreckage of the crashed Nepalese plane and recovered one more.
Unlike on Sunday, there was hardly any hustle and bustle around Rustomjee Athena Housing Society in Thane city’s Balkam area where Vaibhavi Bandekar Tripathi lived with her children, with police not even visiting her flat on Monday.
The residents of the housing society too remained silent about the family and barred the entry of media persons in their premises. The security guards of Rustomjee Athena Housing Society, where the news of the death of the couple and their children broke out in the media, was keeping a strict vigil and not allowing any non-resident to enter the premises.
Vaibhavi Tripathi held a top position in a private financial firm in Mumbai and had recently taken leave to go on vacation with her family members. According to sources in her office, Vaibhavi Tripathi was in the number 2 position in the company, which operates from BKC, a business district in suburban Mumbai.
An employee of the company’s office said that they came to know about the accident on Monday morning and everyone is in shock. Sources declined to share further details about him, saying that his superiors have asked the employees of the company not to interact with the media. The 80-year-old mother of Vaibhavi Tripathi, who is unwell, is left alone at the family home in Thane and has not been informed about the tragedy.
A Mumbai Police official said they are waiting for the arrival of a man who has rented his flat in the western suburb of Borivali and is currently out of the metropolis. Other family members were waiting for the bodies to reach Thane from Kathmandu.
Thane District Disaster Control Officer Anita Jawanjule said government officials are coordinating with Nepal authorities to bring back the bodies. A senior officer of the Kapurbawdi police station, under whose jurisdiction the Rustomjee Athena Housing Society falls, said they did not visit the family flat on Monday.