More than 4500 people crowded Wailoaloa Crematorium in Nadi to pay their last respects to a Nadi family of five killed in a road crash.
The article was published in this newspaper on Thursday August 9, 1984.
Several thousand earlier went to the family’s home at Nawaka where the bodies were placed in five separate coffins.
Relatives and friends wept openly as the coffins were put on a carrier which took them to the cemetery.
Killed in the crash at Semo, Sigatoka were Manik Raj, his wife Nirmal Wati, their son Manoj Kumar and daughters Vimal Kumari and Saroj Kumari.
They were driving back from Sigatoka after visiting relatives when their car collided with a Fiji Gas van coming from the opposite side.
Mr Raj was a maintenance foreman at Westgate Hotel while Manoj attended Shri Vivekananda High School, and his sisters attended Andrews Primary School in Nadi.
Teachers and students from the schools and hotel staff were among mourners at the funeral.
At the Wailoaloa crematorium, the bodies were taken out of the coffins and placed on a single pyre on the seashore.
Before the bodies were cremated people filed past to pay their last respects to the family.
Mr Raj left behind his mother and two sisters while Wati is survived by two brothers and four sisters.
Raj and Wati had been married for twenty years.
