advertisement
“Please don’t ever send me back to Sudan. I’d rather go to hell, but never again to Sudan,” Avtar Singh, an Indian rescued as part of Operation Kaveri, told The Quint a few hours after he landed at an airport in Mumbai.
Avtar, an electrical technician at Khartoum’s Aarti Steel is one of 3,000 Indians who lived in Sudan and were left helpless after violence erupted in various parts of the country - a direct result of a vicious power struggle within the country's military leadership.
Singh and 20 other Indians narrowly escaped the Sudanese military’s clutches, who had held them hostage at gunpoint for hours, looted all their belongings, and attacked them.
However, unlike most Indian nationals who have been rescued, Avtar Singh was not able to go home just yet. He had to await the completion of a quarantine due to the presence of Yellow Fever in Sudan and is currently at a quarantine centre in Mumbai.
The Quint spoke to several Indians who were rescued as part of Operation Kaveri and explored their journey from Sudan, the hardships they faced, the rescue mission and their longing to return home.
Kamlesh Channiyara, a resident of the Soba industrial area in Khartoum, was packing up for a holiday with his friends when he received the news that the military had captured Khartoum International Airport.
He told The Quint that while the first few days of the conflict did not cause any direct problems for them, the group realised that this was no small conflict when the violence did not stop after a week.
"We started running out of food, and the situation worsened to a point where we bought 5 kgs of potatoes and tomatoes each for 40,000 Sudanese pounds (Rs 5,500)," Channiyara asked.
It was just a few days later that Kamlesh got to go back home to Rajkot, in Gujarat, via Jeddah in Saudi Arabia.
Similar luck followed for Vasil Charuthala, a Kerala-native who travelled to Sudan to conduct a survey of the Al Kahir port within Port Sudan, along with colleagues at the Mumbai-based offshore survey company.
Charuthala spoke to The Quint and said:
His office in India coordinated with the Indian embassy, who asked the group to move to the school in Port Sudan.
“We arrived in Saudi Arabia aboard INS Sumedha and were then put on a flight to Mumbai,” he added.
However, Avtar Singh’s journey was not as smooth.
On the morning of April 15, 400 Sudanese military men entered the Aarti steel factory and took over 150 employees, hostage. Amongst those held at gunpoint were Avtar Singh and 20 fellow Indians, who were held in one room.
“They looted all our belongings and cash. All we had left were the clothes on our body. They stole the company’s money and vandalised the factory,” he narrated to The Quint.
“We were held hostage from 9 am to 5 pm. At 5 pm, a high-ranking person from their group came in. We requested that he let us go. He also agreed and said that now that we have been ‘looted entirely,’ we are free to go," Singh narrated.
But Singh was not out of danger, stranded with minimal supplies in the middle of a warzone, and knew it would take a miracle to reach Port Sudan without assistance.
To get to Port Sudan, the group were in conversation with a company called Omega Steel. While the company had a few busses, they had no diesel, and their factory had been turned into a military base.
As a result, close to 200 workers from Omega Steele and the 20 Indians, raided the Omega Steel factory when it was empty, in an attempt to pull off a heroic escape from Khartoum.
Speaking to The Quint, he said:
But Avtar Singh could not be bothered about the Sudanese military anymore. He entered Port Sudan in one of five busses, all powered by the diesel taken from the military, ready to go home.
Singh was informed that he could not get on a flight to Delhi with the rest of his colleagues since it was full and was subsequently placed on a flight to Delhi via Mumbai. However, authorities cited “protocol” and asked him to de-board in Mumbai itself.
While he was not diagnosed with Yellow fever and had been vaccinated, the commotion in Sudan led to Singh losing his vaccination card, and he said that it “ended up in the things that were looted from us in Sudan.”ss
Singh told The Quint that he was released from the Quarantine centre on Saturday, 29 April and is scheduled to board a flight to Chandigarh on Sunday morning.
“I asked them why there were no such issues in Delhi, so the officer told me that there is no official order but ‘this is the protocol.’ If there was an official order, the Delhi airport would have done the same, right?” Singh asked, during a phone call with The Quint.
Meanwhile, Vasil Charuthala described the conditions of the quarantine centre and said:
He added that several families within the quarantine centre have been unable to contact their loved ones since the military looted their possessions in Sudan.
“They only have their passport and the clothes they are already wearing. They don’t have money either.”
Moreover, Charuthala shed light on another grievance of the rescued Indians who’re currently quarantined.
“How can someone who was just looted of everything they own afford any form of transport?” he asked.
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)