Kenyan police were combing a stretch of shoreline on the Indian Ocean yesterday in an effort to recover the body of Rohan Pathak, the five-year-old Irish boy believed to have drowned alongside his parents and a sibling in a boating accident at the weekend.
The bodies of Mrs Marguerite Elizabeth Pathak, who comes from Dublin, her husband Kiran and their eight-year-old son Sachin were viewed by relatives in the coastal town of Mombasa yesterday.
Mr Pathak's mother, Dr Yusha Pathak, who had travelled from London, said that a post-mortem had been carried out at the Pandya Memorial Hospital in Mombasa. The family hopes to repatriate the bodies to Ireland for cremation once the formalities are completed.
On Saturday the Pathaks' hired boat, Moonraker, was hit by a freak wave and capsized 20 miles south of Mombasa as it attempted to cross a coral reef.
The three-man crew and six passengers were flung into the sea but while the crew and two Nairobi schoolboys survived, the entire Pathak family drowned.
They had arrived at the Indian Ocean Beach Club just two days earlier following a week-long safari in the Masai Mara game park. The holiday was booked by Mr Ajee Kapila, a family friend and director of the company that owns the hotel. "It's very sad. We were waiting for them to come here to visit afterwards," he said.
Kwale division police chief, Mr Dominic Mutevu, said that the boat wreckage had been removed from the sea and broken up. However it failed to yield Rohan Pathak's body, as did an extensive sea search by the Kenyan navy and local fishing and diving boats.
"We believe the body must be somewhere along the coastline and we have sent our officers out to search," he said. He believed the victims were not wearing lifejackets when the boat capsized. "The wave that hit them was so big there was no time to look for those things," he said. The captain of the boat has been interviewed by police and released from hospital.
A coast hotelier, Mr Raymond Matiba, said the local community was very upset at the news of the tourist deaths.
"We were out searching yesterday and others are out again today. With a little body missing people are not able to grieve. Everybody wants to find it," he said.
The Department of Foreign Affairs yesterday confirmed the names of the family.
The couple lived at Temple Villas, near Palmerston Park, in Rathgar, Dublin. It is understood that Mr Pathak, a businessman, had extended family among the Indian community in the capital, Nairobi.
Rohan Pathak was incorrectly identified as a girl in yesterday's edition due to an error by staff at Diani Beach Hospital.