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 into the hotel on Monday night for a meeting scheduled with the drug controller general of India (DCGI) in New Delhi on Tuesday regarding his ‘freeze dried plasma’ project under Mothercell Regenerative Centre in Trichy.“He had an appointment with DCGI in New Delhi for a meeting to discuss our ongoing project. But, tragedy struck him,” said his colleague and orthopaedic surgeon Dr V R Ravi in Trichy on Wednesday. The news of the death of the doctor reached his family after one of his colleagues tried to contact him over phone on Tuesday 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. The funeral will be held at Velachery in Chennai.According to scientific co-ordinator D Avinash Gandi of the centre, two employees of Maharashtra-based private pharmaceutical companies who stayed with Sankaranarayanan also died in the accident. “All the three were allotted separate rooms in the first floor. Since they wanted to discuss about the next day’s meeting, they asked for a one big room in the fourth floor and met with the tragedy,” he said.Sankaranarayanan and his colleague Dr Ravi had presented a proposal on freeze dried plasma to defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman during her visit to Trichy in March 2018.

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