Jacintha's body flown in to Mangalore

Mangalore, December 16: The body of Mangalore-based Jacintha Saldanha who died in unfortunate circumstances, was flown in from Mumbai to Mangalore International Airport on Sunday afternoon.

The jute-wrapped coffin containing Jacintha's body was brought and transferred to an ambulance which will transport it to Manipal where it be kept overnight at the morgue of Kasturba Medical College. It will be taken to Shirva, around 50 km from here on Monday, for the funeral mass at Our Lady of Health Church and burial ceremony at the cemetery.

Although awaited with much anticipation, there was nothing much to be gathered at the scene. Jacintha's husband Benedict Barboza and children Junal and Lisha, who accompanied the body, shied from the crowd of media and left in a hurry. While family friend of Jacintha's, Ivan D'Souza was present at the airport, the absence of immediate family members was conspicuous when the body was flown in.

Security arrangements are being made in Mangalore and at Shirva to maintain law and order and ensure no untoward incident takes place.

Shirva is the home town of Barboza where his mother and sisters reside. It is well known for growing jasmine flowers.

Mangalore diocese Vicar General Dennis Prabhu and Mangalore Archbishop Aloysius Paul D'Souza will hold a prayer service in the local cathedral Sunday evening where both the families, their relatives and friends will be present.

Saldanha, who graduated from Father Muller College of Nursing in Mangalore in the mid-1980s, first worked at Muscat in Oman for a few years and went to London after marriage 15 years ago to live with Barboza, an accountant in the British National Health Service at Bristol, 190km from London.

Jacintha was found unconscious on December 7 in the quarters of King Edward VII Hospital in central London where she was working as a senior nurse, and was pronounced dead when brought into the hospital in an ambulance. She unwittingly got involved in a hoax call from a radio station in Australia on December 4 when she was on duty at the hospital where Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middletown was admitted the previous day after she complained of acute morning sickness.