Passport to Loganathan's family members issued in one hour

Chennai, Apr 18: Eversince Prof G V Loganathan, one of the shoot out victims in the Virginia University, settled in the US three decades back, he had been repeatedly calling his parents to come and stay with him in the US.

Call it quirk of fate, the parents, who had been skipping it all these years citing old age, are now forced to fly to the US tonight to attend their son's last rites, along with seven of their family members.

The parents were ''compelled'' to leave for the US to fulfill their son's wish, who wanted that his body be buried in the Varsity campus if anything happened to him.

Loganathan's parents, G K Vasudevan and mother V Kannammal did not even wish to get a passport for themselves all these years. His brother Senguttuvelan and his wife Senthamizh Selvi did not have one either.

The other five members, however, had a passport and Visas were also being readied in a record time as a special case to enable the grief-stricken family to take the flight to US at 0030 hrs tonight.

Considering the emergency situation and instructions from the External Affairs Ministry and the Chief Minister's Secretariat here, four members of the family were issued passports today in a record time of one hour.

Regional Passport Officer (RPO) Ms Sumathi Ravichandran told newspersons that it was for the first time in the history of Chennai RPO that a passport had been issued in one hour.

''As a special case, we have also waived the Tatkal fees of Rs 3500. We collected only the normal fees of Rs 1,000 each for issuing the passport,'' she added.

After the officials in the passport office completed the formalities, the passports were issued today to Mr Vasudevan, Kannammal, Senguttuvelan and Senthamizh Selvi, she added.

Ms Sumathi said that soon after receiving the message about the unfortunate incident and the instructions from the Chief Minister's Secretariat and External Affairs Ministry, the officials in the RPO spoke to Loganathan's brother Palanivelu and informed him about the formalities for getting the passport. Armed with a letter from the District Collector and accompanied by Revenue officials, Mr Vasudevan, Kannammal, Senguttuvelan and Senthamizh Selvi drove to the Passport office here at 1000 hrs.

While Loganathan's mother, Kannammal, who wept unconsolably chose to stay put in the car, the other three were taken to the passport officer. The formalities of filling up the passport forms were completed and the passports were issued in one hour, Ms Sumathi added.

Accompanying them to the US would be the slain Professor's another brother Palanivel, his wife Nirmala, Loganathan's cousin P Kumaresan and his wife Deepa and Loganathan's father-in-law V.Ramakrishnan.

Mr Ramakrishnan, Kumaresan and Deepa, who were staying in Mumbai, took a flight to Bangalore and reached Gobichettpalayam by road yesterday, and came to Chennai this morning along with the other family members.

She said the US Consulate here was also making special arrangements to issue the Visas for the nine family members of Mr Loganathan in half an hour's time.

''They will take the 0030 hrs flight for US tonight. The tickets are already blocked and the State government is taking care of all the expenses of the bereaved family'', Ms Sumathi said.

Mediapersons jostled for space in the RPO's room and took pains to get a byte from Mr Senguttuvelan. However, Loganathan's family friend, Venkatesh, requested the media not to disturdb him considering the situation. On the reasons behind Loganathan's parents not having a passport all these years, Mr Venkatesh told UNI that there was no special reason.

''He (Loganathan) had been calling them. But they did not want to go to US due to their old age. That's why they did not even apply for passport till now''.

''What's there in the US for us to see. We are old'', was the readymade reply given by the parents to Loganathan, who spoke to them on April 14 on the occasion of Tamil New Year day'', Mr Venkatesh said.

Mr Loganathan, who last visited his family in 2004, had promised to visit them again in the next few months. But fate proved otherwise!

UNI