Tower-tragedy girls identified

Press, 9 December 1981, Page 6

Tower-tragedy girls identified

NZPA New Plymouth Two New Zealand girls involved in last Friday’s tower collapse in the Indian city of New Delhi have been identified as Jacqueline Sparks and Maree Kuriger, both of New Plymouth. Miss Sparks’s father, Mr C. . F. Sparks, said his daughter had telephoned from the New Zealand Embassy in New Delhi on Monday evening to say she was unharmed. The New Delhi correspondent of the London newspaper, the “Guardian,” reported that the police were trying to trace the two New Zealanders. He said a judicial inquiry had been established to investigate whether a deliberate attack on the two: girls halfway up the winding stone staircase inside the ancient tower led to the stampede in which 45 people died. “They were in the tower during the stampede, but the

rest of the story about this incident is news to us,” Mr Sparks said. “They did not mention that but the line was very bad.” “If the Indian police are looking for them they cannot have looked very far, because the embassy knows where they are.” Mr Sparks said the two girls, both nurses, left New Zealand in August and had been travelling through Asia to Europe. The ’ ’‘Guardian” reported that Miss Sparks escaped from the 1 tower with her clothes torn off and was seen in a tourist bus covering herself in a borrowed shirt and a tattered piece of cloth. She reportedly told an Indian reporter: .“It was planned.” The stampede began after the lights went out while hundreds of visitors climbed the 300 steps to the first storey of . the tower.