The Basus of Vivekananda Road returned home from Ladakh on Wednesday evening - two of them in coffins.

Scores of friends and relatives had turned up at the airport to receive the bodies of IIT Kharagpur student Soumyadeep Basu, 19, and his mother Rajasri Basu, 50. They had died in an avalanche in Ladakh on Monday.

Soumyadeep's father Padmanava, a scientist and head of the nuclear physics department at the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics in Calcutta, was injured in the incident. He returned to the city on the same flight via Delhi.

State housing and youth services minister Aroop Biswas received the bodies after the Air India plane landed in Dum Dum around 7.25pm. He was part of a convoy that accompanied two hearses from the airport to the family's home at 232 Vivekananda Road.

"At the airport, Padmanava Basu stood beside the coffins for a while before leaving for his home," Biswas said.

Soumyadeep and his mother will be cremated at Nimtala on Wednesday night, the minister said.

The accident in Ladakh occurred around 10.30am when Soumyadeep and his parents were travelling in a Xylo near Khardung La.

Soumyadeep, a former South Point student who was pursuing a five-year MSc course in physics, and Rajasri, an associate professor of political science at Rabindra Bharati University, died on the spot.

Asit Kumar Das, a relative and neighbour of the Basu family, said: "They were highly educated and warm and friendly with everyone. We are all shocked."

One of Soumyadeep's friends, Kirit Ghosh, said he was good not only in studies but also in chess.

Indrashis Bhattacharya, who studied with Soumyadeep at South Point, recounted how he would always explain sums to him.

Several Rabindra Bharati University teachers, too, were present at the house. Associate professor Rina Bose Mitra said Rajasri was very strict. "But she would never hesitate to help her students if they had any problem."

Soumyadeep was a Jagadis Bose National Science Talent Search (JBNSTS) scholar. He and one of his friends from South Point, Saptarashmi Banerjee, also a JBNSTS scholar, were doing a research project on image processing under the supervision of Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology (IIEST), Shibpur, director Ajoy Kumar Ray.

Banerjee is a first-year computer science student at IIEST.

Being a student of IIT Kharagpur, Soumyadeep would visit IIEST on weekends for research work. The project had been progressing fast, largely because of Soumyadeep's "outstanding contribution", Ray said. The IIEST director, who visited the Basu house, said Soumyadeep was an "exceptionally brilliant boy".

"If I was in a meeting, he would sit outside my chamber for hours together to clear his doubts. I have never seen such dedication in a 19-year-old boy," he said.

Saptarashmi told Metro from Germany, where he is interning, that he was shattered.