TN: Slain academic's family leaves for US

Chennai, Apr 19: Nine grief-stricken family members of Prof G V Loganathan who was killed in a shootout at Virginia Tech, left here early this morning for the US to attend his funeral.

After the arrival of the family members, the brilliant academic will be buried in the campus of his favourite institution where he had been teaching for the last 15 years as per his wishes.

The entire travel expenses of the family was borne by the Tamil Nadu Government.

Apart from his parents G K Vasudevan and V Kannammal, others who boarded the Lufthansa flight to Washington included his brothers Senguttuvelan and Palanivel and sisters-in-law Senthamizh Selvi and Nirmala, cousin P Kumaresan, his wife Deepa and Prof Loganathan's father-in-law V Ramakrishnan.

The flight took off at 0150 hrs. From Washington the family members would reach Virginia by a chartered flight arranged by the University.

As a special case, the Regional passport office here issued passports for four of the family members in a record time of one hour yesterday after waiving the tatkal fee of Rs 3,500. The passports would be valid for next ten years.

The US Consulate also expedited the issue of travel visas to the family by issuing Visas to all the nine members in a short span of time.

UNI

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