BENGALURU: It was a mighty sigh of relief for 362 flyers on board the Saudi Airlines FE 3624 when it touched down at the Kempegowda International Airport around 4.30 pm on Friday. Having lived in fear for their lives in Sudan, they had managed to reach Jeddah on a ship or special Indian Air Force flight before getting on board the repatriation flight to Bengaluru. The passengers included two infants, 12 children and 107 women.
Of the 362 flyers, 114 were from Karnataka. A majority of them were from Shivamogga (50), while others were from Mysuru (45), Bengaluru (9), Kalaburagi (4) and two each from Udupi and Ramanagara and one each from Hassan and Davanagere.
The 45-year-old Nithin Manoj Amanni from Mangaluru was glad that he made it alive from Khartoum Bahari. He worked as a production manager at Tiga Plastic Factory for the last 22 years. He had to travel nearly 40 hours, covering the distance by road and flight.
“My factory was shut down suddenly. Thankfully, my family left for Mangaluru last year. I was without water and power in my house for four days. My car was stolen. Bullets came darting into my house. One night, I managed to walk to my friend’s house and seven families mobilised money to hire a bus to Port Sudan. At many places, fighters of the two factions stopped us, but somehow we managed to reach the port. The Indian Embassy offered us food and other necessities. An armed force flight flew 130 of us to Jeddah and in half an hour, we got this flight. Some of my colleagues had to take a ship from the port to Jeddah which took nearly 12 hours.” Manoj later boarded a flight to Mangaluru.
Muhammed Irshad Maniyar, his wife Gulnar and their children -- four-year-old Safwan and eight-year-old Hanna -- were stuck inside their house for over a week. He and two of his colleagues from Bengaluru’s Finonyx Software Systems were in Sudan to provide IT support to Balad Bank in Khartoum. “My family was sitting inside the house unable to step out for 10 days. When my kids kept asking about the blasts, I told them Diwali was being celebrated outside. It was a horrible experience,” Maniyar said.
Among the passengers evacuated, 34 were from Tamil Nadu, 33 were from Andhra Pradesh, 32 were from Kerala, 22 were from Telangana, 30 were from Maharashtra, four from Bihar and the rest were from other states.
The state government had arranged five KSRTC buses to ferry the evacuees to their hometowns.
Manoj Rajan, Commissioner of Disaster Management and Nodal Officer from Karnataka said that 40 flyers from other states had not carried the mandatory yellow fever vaccination certificate.
“They have all been sent to a six-day quarantine at Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Health Sciences. Some of them have either lost the certificates or left them behind. The certificates are being tracked using passports and other documents and they will be allowed to leave as soon as we get the certificates. The others have to complete the quarantine period,” he added.