Dr Kotnis' family meets Chinese President

Mumbai, Nov 23 (UNI) Keeping alive their contact with the Chinese government, nine members of the family of Dr Dwarakanath Kotnis, including his two sisters, today met Chinese President Hu Jintao here.

Dr Kotnis, a general physician from Maharashtran, served as a part of a medical mission sent to China by the Jawaharlal Nehru-led Indian National Congress party during ''China's Resistance War against the Japanese Aggression'' in 1938. He died in China in 1942.

His two sisters - Vatsala Kotnis and Manorama Kotnis - along with seven other members of the Kotnis family, met Hu at Taj Mahal Hotel here this morning.

After half-an-hour-long meeting, Vatsala Kotnis, 79, told the reporters that the Chinese President paid rich tributes to the great sacrifice made by Dr Kotnis during his humanitarian mission in China.

The family gifted a biography of Dr Kotnis, written by his brother Mangesh Kotnis, a CD of Hindi movie 'Dr Kotnis Ki Amar Kahani', and handloom bedspreads from Solapur, the family native place in Maharashtra, to Hu.

The visiting President gifted the family an album of rare photographs of Dr Kotnis and the medical mission in China.

This was the second meeting of the Kotnis family with Chinese officials in Mumbai in three months. Earlier on August 16, Chinese Ambassador to India Sun Yuxi, acompanied by Mumbai-based Consul General Song Deheng, had met the family on the occasion of what Chinese described as the 60th anniversary of the victory of China's Resistance War against Japanese Aggression.

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