New Delhi: Congress MP Shashi Tharoor has written to external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj to intervene and rescue three Indian national stranded in Mozambique for the last five months. In a detailed letter dated November 21, the senior Congress leader has urged Swaraj to take up the matter when she meets her counterpart from the South African nation later this month. The Ministry of External Affairs is yet to make a statement on the same.
The three men, identified as Madhuchandra Jailor, Praveen Kumar Rajesh and Saiju Papchaery, are residents of Karnataka and have been stranded in Napula in Mozambique. They were part of a 16-member tribal party of the Hakki Pikki community that had travelled to Mozambique to sell some of their products. The community is known to travel far and wide for sales.
“They approached the immigration authorities on June 21 in Manica City, Chimoio for an extension of their visa. The officer in-charge offered to give them a visa for a year on which they could travel in and out of the country, which they accepted. Unfortunately, they did not realise that this was, in fact, an illegal work permit, on account of which they were all picked up, detained and their passports were confiscated on July 2, 2018,” Tharoor wrote.
The community got in touch with the Indian High Commission there in July and after negotiations with the local authorities, 13 of them were deported to India in August. But the three said men are still stuck and were chargesheeted last month. The men, Tharoor’s letter states, have no funds to sustain themselves. “They continue to be detained in a foreign land with no fault of their own,” the letter says.
Last month, Anil Kumar, head of chancery at the High Commission at Maputo, had said that the three men were neither detained nor arrested but prohibited from leaving the country and that Indian authorities were doing their best to get them back safely.
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