Bengaluru: The body of Naveen Shekarappa Gyanagoudar, 21, an Indian medical student who died in Ukraine on March 1, arrived in Bengaluru on Monday morning and was taken to his home town in Haveri town of Karnataka.
Gyanagoudar, a fourth-year medical student at Kharkiv National Medical University, was killed when he stepped out of his apartment to buy groceries. He was the first Indian casualty in the Ukraine war.
His last rites will be done according to the Veerashaiva-Lingayat community’s tradition, Gyanagoudar’s family said. The body will then be donated to SS Medical College for research. “We will perform the rituals as per our tradition and then will donate his body,” said Shekarappa, Gyanagoudar’s father.
“Since childhood, he wanted to become a doctor and serve society. However, he did not get a seat in a government medical college in India, so he went to Ukraine to pursue his medical education. His dream of becoming a doctor did not come true, so we decided to donate his body so that the future generation could do their research and be beneficial for them,” his father said.
It was a Herculean task to bring the body back from the war-torn country, said Karnataka chief minister Basavaraj Bommai, who received the body at Bengaluru airport. “It is unfortunate that so many people returned (from Ukraine) but Naveen lost his life in the bombing,” Bommai said.
