Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar to attend Ebrahim Raisi's funeral in Iran

The Ministry of External Affairs said that Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar will go to Iran on Wednesday to participate in a formal ceremony expressing condolences for the deaths of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian in a helicopter crash.

As a show of respect for Raisi, India is observing a day of state mourning on Tuesday.

"Vice-President of India Jagdeep Dhankhar will pay a visit to the Islamic Republic of Iran on May 22 to attend official ceremony to pay condolences on the tragic demise of President Seyyed Ebrahim Raisi, Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and other Iranian officials in an unfortunate helicopter crash on May 19," an MEA statement said on Tuesday.

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Both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Droupadi Murmu have expressed their sympathies over Raisi's passing. Tuesday, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar paid a visit to the Iranian embassy in Delhi to offer India's sympathies for their loss.

Hours after their helicopter crashed in a misty, hilly area in the country's northwest, the president of Iran, the foreign minister, and a number of other officials were discovered dead on Monday, according to Iran state media.

Raisi, sixty-three, and his group had just returned from a visit to a community near the border between Azerbaijan and Iran and were on their way to Tabriz.