Parents of Malaysia Airlines steward Sanjid Singh Sandhu, Jijar Singh and Jarjit Kaur, speak to Bukit Gelugor MP Ramkarpal Singh (not seen in photo) as he holds pictures of Sanjid (left) and son Hans Singh Sandhu. – The Malaysian Insider pic by Hasnoor Hussain, July 20, 2014."Dadaji, don't be sad. Your son is gone, but this son is here. I will take care of you all."
Those were the words uttered to his grandfather by 10-year old Hans Singh Sandhu, son of air steward Sanjid Singh Sandhu who was on the ill-fated Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 that was shot down while flying above eastern Ukraine on Thursday.
The words were recalled by Sanjid's father Jijar Singh, 71, when Bukit Gelugor MP Ramkarpal Singh and Batu Kawan MP Kasturi Patto visited him and his wife Jagjit Kaur, 73, at their house in Alma, Penang today.
Holding back tears, Jijar said Hans, who stays in Kuala Lumpur with his mother, had told him this over the phone after the news of the crash broke out.
"For a 10-year old, he is very intelligent," Jijar said when asked by Ramkarpal how the boy was handling the news.
Jijar now hopes that Sanjid's body will be found and brought home to Malaysia for a proper funeral to be conducted by the family.
He said he was informed that Sanjid's passport was among the first passports found, unburnt and intact, amid the wreckage. "We hope his body will be found like that," he said.
Jijar said he was concerned about reports of looting at the crash site and the conditions of the unattended bodies in summer temperatures in Ukraine.
He also expressed sympathy for families of victims of MH370 which went missing in March and has yet to be found.
"At least I know my son's body is somewhere there, but they (MH370 relatives) have been in limbo for months," he said.
"Why is this happening to MAS (Malaysia Airlines)?" he asked, referring to the double tragedy over four months.
He said he and his wife had been scarcely informed by the authorities until this morning, and urged that they be kept updated regularly on the recovery operations.
He added that his family is disturbed by the "many, many questions unanswered" in the MH17 case, such as why flights were allowed to travel above the violent conflict zone and how pro-Russian rebels could have gotten the capability to shoot the plane from long range.
"The unfortunate thing was that all the passengers and crew were innocent bystanders," he added.
In a twist of fate, Sanjid, 41, had swapped flights to work on flight MH17 that crashed with 298 people, including 80 children and 15 Malaysian crew members.
Incidentally, his wife, Tan Bee Geok, 43, a stewardess, had swapped out of flight MH370 which then vanished while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8.
MH17 was on its way from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when Ukrainian Air Traffic Control lost contact with the plane at 1415GMT (10.15pm Malaysian time) on July 17, at 30km from Tamak waypoint, about 50km from the Russia-Ukraine border.
- TMI
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