TRICHY: Dental surgeon Dr S Sankaranarayanan, 55, from Trichy is one of the 17 people who died in a fire accident at Hotel Arpit Palace in New Delhi in the early hours on Tuesday. His family members confirmed his death on Wednesday.Sankaranarayanan is said to have died due to suffocation caused by smoke from the fire that enveloped the hotel around 4am on Tuesday. He is survived by his wife, a son and daughter.The dental surgeon checked in to the hotel on Monday night for a meeting scheduled with some government officials -- regarding a freeze dried plasma project -- in Delhi on Tuesday. He was into stem cell research at his centre in Trichy.The news of the death of the doctor reached his family after one of his colleagues tried to contact him over phone last morning. Since his cellphone number was unreachable, the colleague managed to contact the hotel and got to know that he was one of the deceased people.Meanwhile, police contacted his family members and sent them the photo of the body to confirm his identity. On Wednesday, his family members visited the hospital in New Delhi where the body was kept.Sankaranarayanan and his colleague Dr VR Ravi presented a proposal on freeze dried plasma to defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman during her visit to Trichy in March 2018. They said dried plasma (or powdered plasma) would help arrest blood loss of injured soldiers in battlefields. The clinical trial on the project is pending.The funeral will be held at Velachery in Chennai.

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