Some residents of Thane are struggling to come to terms with the death of four members of a family – an estranged couple and their two children – whose yearly vacation in picturesque Nepal was tragically cut short when the plane crashed.

Thane/Mumbai: 

Some residents of Thane are struggling to come to terms with the death of four members of a family – an estranged couple and their two children – whose yearly vacation in picturesque Nepal was tragically cut short when the plane carrying them crashed into a mountain.

Businessman Ashok Kumar Tripathi and his Thane-based estranged wife Vaibhavi Bandekar Tripathi were on a reunion trip to the Himalayan country along with their kids, son Dhanush, 22, and daughter Ritika, 15, when tragedy struck on Sunday.

Ashok Tripathi, 54, who ran a company in Odisha, and Vaibhavi Tripathi, 51, who worked in a financial firm in Mumbai, had separated following court orders, an official from the Kapurbawdi police station in Thane said on Monday.

As per court orders, the family was to be together for 10 days in a year and this year they had planned a trip to Nepal. Their plane, belonging to Tara Air, went missing on Sunday morning in the mountainous region of Nepal minutes after taking off from the tourist city of Pokhara.

Besides the four Indian nationals, the plane was carrying two Germans and 13 Nepal passengers, along with a three-member Nepal crew. Rescuers have so far pulled out 20 bodies from the wreckage of the crashed plane and located one more.

Unlike on Sunday, there was hardly any movement around the Rustomjee Athena housing society in Thane city’s Balkum area, where Vaibhavi Bandekar Tripathi lived with her children.