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Corporate leaders, politicians and celebrities joined hundreds of people on Thursday as they bid final adieu to one of India’s most respected and internationally recognised business leaders, Ratan Tata, who died aged 86.
IMAGE: Policemen carry the flag of India as they perform a guard of honour ahead of the former chairman of Tata Group Ratan Tata’s funeral, in Mumbai. Photograph: Francis Mascarenhas/Reuters
Last rites were performed at Mumbai’s Worli Crematorium with full state honours in the presence of Union Home Minister Amit Shah, his cabinet colleague Piyush Goyal, Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, his deputy Devendra Fadnavis, and Congress leader and former chief minister Sushilkumar Shinde. Family and friends as well as top officials of Tata group joined the ceremony where Mumbai Police paid tribute to Tata with a gun salute.
Tata, the former Tata Group chairman who transformed a staid group into India’s largest and most influential conglomerate with a string of eye-catching deals breathed his last at south Mumbai’s Breach Candy Hospital at 11.30 pm on October 9.
Maharashtra as well as half a dozen other states declared one day mourning while some official programmes, including a scheduled press conference by Goyal on his US visit, were cancelled in his honour.
IMAGE: Ratan Tata’s body is lifted before being put in a coffin. Photograph: Francis Mascarenhas/Reuters
Tata Group’s flagship IT firm, TCS went ahead with holding its pre-scheduled meeting to approve financial results for the quarter ending September but cancelled a post-earning press conference.
Ratan Tata’s body was on Thursday morning taken in a hearse, decked with white flowers, from his home to the NCPA in south Mumbai where it was kept for people to pay their last respects. Draped in the Indian national flag, his body was kept at a cultural centre.
The industry titan’s family members, including the half-brother Noel Tata, and top executives from the Tata Group like chairman N Chandrasekaran, were present at the crematorium in Worli.
IMAGE: Policemen carry the coffin of Ratan Tata. Photograph: Francis Mascarenhas/Reuters
Union Home Minister Amit Shah, his cabinet colleague Piyush Goyal, Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, his deputy Devendra Fadnavis, Congress leader and former CM Sushilkumar Shinde, among others, were also present.
Photograph: Francis Mascarenhas/Reuters
The last rites were performed as per the Parsi tradition, one of the priests present at the crematorium said.
Photograph: Francis Mascarenhas/Reuters
After the funeral, there will be three more days of rituals which will be conducted at the late industrialist’s bungalow in Colaba, south Mumbai, he said.
IMAGE: Ratan Tata’s dog, Goa. Photograph: Francis Mascarenhas/Reuters
Tata (86), a Padma Vibhushan recipient, died after a brief illness at a city hospital late on Wednesday night.
