West Asia war: 348 stranded Indians return from Iran after sleepless weeks | Chennai News
CHENNAI: A total of 348 Indian citizens from different parts Tamil Nadu And its neighbors, trapped in Iran for more than a month since a war broke out in West Asia, landed in Chennai on a special flight arranged from Armenia by Indian embassy officials.Of the 348 passengers, 327 are Tamils, five are from Puducherry and 10 are from Kerala. Most of the Tamils were natives of Tirunelveli, Kanyakumari and Nagapattinam districts and were working as fishermen in Iran. They were received by Union Minister Piyush Goyal and TN BJP President Naynar Nagantharan and sent to their respective cities in special buses.
The returnees said they were unsure of their fate till the moment they landed in Tamil Nadu.Peter Blasian, 46, of Kanyakumari, said they could hardly sleep for the past month because of the continuous blasts near each day. “It’s very hard to explain how we felt. We had very little hope,” he said. Peter Blasian, as a group with 22 people, were employees of Kish Island in Bandar Abbas and their primary task was to go to sea to catch fish.Although employers helped them with food after war-like conditions broke out in Iran, they had to pay from their own pockets to leave their workplaces for the dangerous 18-hour journey by bus to the city of Qom, where they were received by Indian embassy officials.“From there, the embassy took good care of us with proper food and accommodation and passage to Armenia via Zulfar,” he said. Another resident of Kanyakumari, Anish Raja, 34, said he had visited Iran only three months ago and never expected that he would have to return home in such a crisis. “We went all the way to work as fishermen in Iran for good income, but now the future looks bleak,” he said.
