Mangaluru: The victims of the Mangalore 2010 air crash have yet to achieve closure both in the courts and on the ground, but administration is slowly grinding itself towards that objective. On Friday, Jul 17, the  Deputy commissioner A B Ibrahim chaired a meeting to decide about the architectural structure of a memorial park for them close to the Kulur bridge where 12 unidentified bodies of the victims had been buried.

A 90 acre land which belongs to New Mangaluru Port Trust is being developed as a memorial park at a cost of Rs 35 lakh by NMPT. The memorial park is expected to be ready by September this year.

Raajappa, superintendent engineer NMPT said, “The gardening work has already started and it would be completed by the end of August but the structure for the memorial needs to be finalized.”

In the meeting, it was decided that a competition would be conducted by the Architects’ Guild and architects coming up with the best designs would be awarded with a cash prize of Rs 50,000 and Rs 25,000 for the first and second places respectively. The design would be finalized within a month.

President of Mangaluru air crash victims’ association Mohammed Beary speaking to the media said, “A memorial for 158 people who lost their lives in the 2010 air crash was much required. The land chosen for the memorial park is ideal. I thank the district administration and the deputy commissioner for taking up this project and starting the work as it was pending from a long time. We had requested the civil aviation ministry and Air India but no one showed any interest in the construction of the memorial.”