Phone hoax tragedy nurse is laid to rest

Hundreds of mourners gathered in a small town in India yesterday for the funeral of a nurse found dead after answering a prank call to the hospital where the Duchess of Cambridge was treated for morning sickness.

Friends and family paid their respects to Jacintha Saldanha, 46, during a simple ceremony in Shirva, some 30 miles north of Mangalore.

Earlier, crowds lined the roads close to the Catholic church to pay their respects while relatives attended a private prayer ceremony at her home.

Ms Saldanha, a mother-of-two, was found hanging in her nurses’ quarters at London’s King Edward VII’s Hospital by a colleague and a security guard on 7 December.

Three days earlier, she transferred a call from two Australian DJs, believing they were the Queen and Prince of Wales, to a colleague who described in detail the duchess’s condition.

Her children, Junal, 16, and Lisha, 14, have described the “unfillable void” left in their lives by their mother’s death.