Anuj Bidve's body brought to India; last rites in Pune

Pune student Anuj Bidve's body was today brought here in a flight by his distraught parents from Britain where he was shot dead last month.

"The body of Anuj Bidve landed here in a British Airways flight from London at 11.45 AM. His parents will take the body to Pune," a senior airport official said.

The last rites will be performed in Pune in the evening.

The 23-year-old engineering student at the Lancaster University was shot dead on December 26 in the British city of Salford in an apparent hate crime.

The grief-stricken parents of Anuj had yesterday made a tearful visit to the spot where the Indian student was shot dead.

Shattered by what they called was an incomprehensible loss, the parents had said that the visit was an "exceedingly difficult" one to make, but they had chosen to come to Salford to witness first hand the place where their son breathed his last so as to keep his memories alive all their life.

"There are no words, the world is finished for us, this is what I can say," a sorrowful Subhash Bidve, the father of the 23-year-old, had told reporters in Salford.

British Prime Minister David Cameron had rued that Bidve's life had been "cruelly and brutally ended" and had offered "huge sympathy" to the visiting parents on behalf of his country.

"An absolutely horrific act has taken their son away from them, and it is absolutely essential the Greater Manchester Police do everything they can to get to the bottom of what happened and make sure the person is rightly brought to justice and there is a very tough punishment. It's unacceptable to have this sort of crime going on in our country," he had said.