Jacintha’s body to be flown to Mangalore today

 

Mangalore, 16 Dec 2012 (TNN): The body of Jacintha Saldanha, 46, the nurse who fell victim to a prank call by two DJs posing as royals, will be brought to Mangalore on Sunday. A Jet Airways flight carrying the body will land here at 2.30pm. 

 

Jacintha was found hanging in the nurses’ quarters of London’s King Edward VII Hospital on December 7, three days after the hoax call. 

 

Jacintha’s funeral will be held at the cemetery of Our Lady of Health Church at Shirva in Udupi district at 4pm on Monday, William Menezes, spokesperson for Most Rev Aloysius Paul D’Souza, Bishop of Mangalore Diocese, said. Family sources informed STOI that the body would be kept in the morgue of the Kasturba Medical College, Manipal. It will be taken to Shirva on Monday to enable people to pay their homage from 3pm to 4pm. 

Meanwhile, Father Muller School of Nursing, where Jacintha studied between 1984 and 1988, has decided to institute a Best Bedside Nurse award in her memory. The Rev Fr Denis D’Sa, administrator, Father Muller Medical College, of which the nursing college is a part, said Jacintha had worked at FMMC as a junior staff nurse for a year after her education. 

 

The hospital will raise the corpus for the award from philanthropists and well-wishers, D’Sa said. During a visit to her alma mater in 2009 for its golden jubilee celebrations, Jacintha had made a donation and promised to raise funds from other alumni working abroad to finance the studies of poor students.