Families leave for US to mourn 9/11 loss

BANGALORE: On Wednesday, when the world mourns the death of over 6,333 people who went missing in the WTC attack on September 11 last, a few families in Karnataka too will grieve the loss of dear ones in the US.
Some families of Indians killed in the WTC attack have already flown to the US to observe the one-year anniversary. Most of the Indians who died were H1-B visa holders in the age group of 22-30.
Four Wipro engineers contracted to Marsh Inc., an insurance company housed on the 97th floor of WTC''s tower-one, were killed in the attack.They include Shreyas Ranganath, Hemanth K. Puttur, Shashikiran L. Kadaba and S. Deepika Kumar from Bangalore.
Wipro has built a hall in their corporate head office in Koramangala in memory of these four employees.
D.S. Ranganath, deputy general manager (SC & PV-MM), BHEL-electrical division on Mysore Road, has left for the US with his wife and son Rohit, a student of BMS Engineering College, to the US to mourn the death of his son Shreyas Ranganath.
According to BHEL sources, the Ranganath family left Bangalore on September 7 for New York. Shreyas was a connoisseur of good food and loved Indian movies. He studied in the Dayanand Sagar College of Engineering and lived in Basavangudi.
Database manager Hemant Kumar, 28, hailed from Puttur, Dakshin Kannada district in Karnataka. His father, a tailor in Puttur, waited till mid-September last year to get good news over phone about the possible survival of his son. Hemant was to be married soon.
Sattaluri Deepika Kumar, 33, a Wipro accountant who had brief stint in Bangalore, is survived by husband Kumar Sattaluri and son Amish in New York. The survivor network is surrogate family to this father-son duo.
Shashi Kiran L. Kadaba was a devotee of Sai Baba and carried his vibhuti in his wallet always. His fiancee, Pushpa Sreenath, would have been married to him by this summer. She lives and works in Dallas. Kiran worked as a software consultant for Marsh & McLennan on the 97th floor of the north tower.
The family of Shyamsundar from Hubli who went missing in the attack could not be contacted.
The number of Indians and particularly people from Karnataka who died in the attack is still uncertain, even after a year.