Waling, Jan. 16: It has been a year since the ATR 72-212A aircraft operated by Yeti Airlines crashed in Pokhara, killing all 72 passengers and crew members on board. But to those who lost loved ones, it feels like the accident happened only yesterday.

Saru Dumre, a manager at the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) who works at the Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA), lost her mother, husband, son and daughter in the crash, with the bodies of her husband, Yuvaraj Sharma, and son, Baby Sharma, never found. This inflicted a trauma that the 34-year-old is still struggling to recover from.

Government bureaucracy caused her more pain. Owing to a lack of bodies, the authorities refused to issue death certificates for Dumre’s spouse and son. She spent almost the entire last year fighting and appealing to get their deaths recognised. According to her father Dhakaram Dumre, she finally got the death certificates but only after what felt like a great war. “The insensitivity and irresponsibility of state bodies added to our suffering,” he grieved.

“My god, the ordeal we were put through,” he recounted. “We were sometimes asked to go to Kathmandu and sometimes to Pokhara. We were tossed around from the District Administration Office of Kaski to the Ministry of Home Affairs, from the Yeti Airlines office to Parbat’s Bihadi Rural Municipality.

Saru’s little brother Ganesh told The Rising Nepal that the Yeti accident “shattered” her. “She still sometimes goes into a state where she forgets who and where she is. She gets upset but she is not able to cry. Her emotions get stuck at her throat.”

“She went through a tragedy that I pray no one ever has to endure.” Ganesh also works at CAAN as a senior officer.

Understanding her condition, CAAN has not given Dumre any hard work. 

On her husband’s side, Dumre only has a brother-in-law now. But since he lives abroad, she is being looked after by her maternal family.

The bodies of only 70 of the 72 people who perished on that flight were recovered and identified, informed Ram Lamichhane, head of Yeti Airlines’ Pokhara office. The two bodies never found belonged to Yuvaraj and Baby.

Meanwhile, our Lekhnath correspondent Phadindra Adhikari reports that the Pokhara Metropolitan City has erected a memorial at the site of last year’s plane crash. 

The names and addresses of all those who were aboard the tragic flight have been carved on the memorial, unveiled by Mayor Dhana Raj Acharya on Monday. 

Acharya also informed that the metro had allocated Rs. 1 million to build a memorial park at the Seti Gorge between wards 7 and 15 of the city. “We have asked the chairs of both the wards to take responsibility for it and have also talked with Yeti Airlines about it,” he said on the occasion.

The metropolis plans to develop the park as a destination for tourists, Pokhara denizens and relatives of the deceased. 

The accident site still has parts of the crashed plane scattered around it. 

The Aircraft Accident Investigation Commission formed in the aftermath of the crash concluded last month that the plane crashed because of the inadvertent movement of both condition levers to the feathered position.