From rxpgnews.com
Passports issued to Indian professor's family
By IANS,
Apr 18, 2007 - 8:16:31 PM
Chennai, April 18 - The grief-stricken parents and relatives of G.V. Loganathan, the Indian professor killed in Monday's Virginia Tech shootout, Wednesday received passports and visas for their US visit to attend his last rites.
Some of the family members did not have passports and their travel documents were readied with the help of the ministry of external affairs and the US consulate.
Having received the documents, the family members were scheduled to leave for Washington later Wednesday night by a Lufthansa flight.
Loganathan, 53, was among the 32 victims of Monday's twin shootings at Virginia Tech -. An alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology -, Kanpur, he was teaching civil and environmental engineering at the university for the last 20 years.
The professor had wanted to have his last rites performed in the country he had adopted and loved as his own.
Nine family members including the professor's 83-year-old father G. Vasudevan, mother V. Kannammal, his brothers and their wives, his father-in-law and a brother-in-law, went to the regional passport office here to get their papers.
Regional Passport Officer Sumathi Ravichandran told the media here, 'We completed the formalities in just an hour, heeding to the request of the ministry of external affairs and the Tamil Nadu government.
'The US consulate also at once cleared the process and provided them with visas,' she added.
G.V. Palanivel, a brother of the late professor, said: 'We did not expect to get the process to be over so soon. The government has made all arrangements for our journey.'
The Tamil Nadu government said it would bear the cost of the US travel for the eminent professor's family, based in a village near Gobichettypalayam in Erode district, about 550 km south of Chennai.
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