Shas­tri Boodan

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

An in­ter­faith memo­r­i­al ser­vice was held on Fri­day in ho­n­our of the vic­tims of the Air In­dia Flight 171 crash. The ser­vice was host­ed by the Cul­tur­al Her­itage Am­bas­sadors of T&T (CHATT).

The air­craft, en route from Ahmed­abad Air­port in In­dia to Gatwick Air­port in Lon­don, crashed short­ly af­ter take-off on June 12. On board were 230 pas­sen­gers and 12 crew mem­bers; on­ly one pas­sen­ger sur­vived. The crash al­so claimed the lives of at least 39 peo­ple on the ground.

CHATT pres­i­dent Mahin­dra Ma­haraj de­scribed the oc­ca­sion as more than a memo­r­i­al—call­ing it a mo­ment of col­lec­tive uni­ty. Ad­dress­ing those gath­ered at Cen­tre Point Mall in Ch­agua­nas, he said, “Flight 171 car­ried with it not just pas­sen­gers , but dreams–par­ents re­turn­ing to chil­dren, work­ers head­ing to­ward op­por­tu­ni­ty, and in­di­vid­u­als sim­ply mak­ing their way through life-all lives full of promise, all lives end­ed too soon.”

Ma­haraj ex­tend­ed words of sym­pa­thy to those af­fect­ed by the tragedy. “Your grief does not go un­no­ticed, and it does not stand alone. Your loss is our loss. We ho­n­our the mem­o­ry of every soul on that flight and those who lost their lives at BJ Med­ical Col­lege, and we keep them alive in our sto­ries, our prayers, and our acts of kind­ness. Whether you re­mem­ber a name, a face, a voice, or even just the feel­ing of loss-know that this com­mu­ni­ty, we here in Trinidad and To­ba­go, stand with you.

“Let to­day not on­ly be a re­mem­brance of tragedy but a reaf­fir­ma­tion of peace, com­pas­sion, and hu­man con­nec­tion. May the souls of those lost in the crash of Flight 171 rest in eter­nal peace. May their mem­o­ry be a bless­ing. And may we, the liv­ing, car­ry for­ward the light they left be­hind.”

Prayers and mes­sages of com­pas­sion were of­fered by rep­re­sen­ta­tives of var­i­ous faiths, in­clud­ing Chris­t­ian de­nom­i­na­tions, Is­lam­ic lead­ers, Sikh rep­re­sen­ta­tives, and branch­es of the Hin­du re­li­gion.

In­di­an High Com­mis­sion­er Dr Pradeep Singh Ra­jpuro­hit said that the loss tran­scend­ed bor­ders. “In mo­ments like these, hu­man­i­ty must come to­geth­er in sol­i­dar­i­ty and com­pas­sion. The con­do­lences ex­tend­ed by the com­mu­ni­ty in T&T for this air tragedy cap­ture our col­lec­tive grief.”

He said DNA test­ing was cur­rent­ly un­der­way, and 200 bod­ies have been iden­ti­fied and hand­ed over to rel­a­tives for last rites. The High Com­mis­sion­er al­so ex­tend­ed thanks to the Gov­ern­ment of T&T for its ex­pres­sions of con­do­lence.