Among the 157 killed on board the Ethiopian Airlines crash on March 10, six were members of an Indian-origin family based in Brampton city, Canada. Virendra Dixit said that the entire family of his Toronto-based son, Prerit Dixit, his wife and two daughters, died in the crash. The parents of Prerit’s wife, residents of Ahmedabad, who had been visiting the family, were also among the dead. The six of them had been on a tour of Africa. “We came to know about this (crash) from the news and we also got it confirmed with my son Arpit who lives in Australia,” retired bank officer Virendra Dixit told The Indian Express. “All our family members, Prerit, his wife Kosha, and two daughters Ashka and Anushka, accompanied by their grandparents Pannagesh Vaidya and Harishini Vaidya died in the crash," he added. Brampton, which is in mourning, has a large Indian-origin population, with Punjabi (13% of the population in 2016) the second-most widely spoken language after English (58%). Across Canada, other than English and French, Punjabi is the third-most widely spoken language (5.4 lakh).
