Coronavirus lockdown: Kannadigas in Dhaka worried, desperate for Bengaluru flight

In February, Mohamed Samiulla left Bengaluru for a new job in Dhaka, Bangladesh as the general manager in charge of operations at a garments factory. The move came with the prospect of a better career and the promise of more money.

Just into his new job, Bangladesh enforced a lockdown to tackle Covid-19 and has remained so for two months. Now, Shamiulla neither has a job nor a way to get back to Bengaluru.

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Shamiulla is one among more than 60 Kannadigas stranded in Dhaka, desperate to return to Karnataka.

“I feel helpless, literally, because I’m neither here nor there,” Shamiulla told DH over the phone. “I was staying in an apartment, but I have now moved in with a friend because I had problems paying rent.”

Shamiulla’s restlessness is not confined to his inability to return. “Bangladesh has no preparation to face Covid-19. If you look at the way people are moving about here, the lockdown is just for namesake. In India, the police are at least enforcing the lockdown. Here, it’s a bomb waiting to explode. And I fear a civil unrest due to non-payment of wages coinciding with the Ramzan festival,” he said.

Adding to the heartburn is the news Shamiulla received that some 800 Sri Lankans will be airlifted soon. “There’s not a single flight to Bengaluru. We’re really worried.”

These Kannadigas came close to returning home when an Air India flight to Chennai was scheduled for May 14 under the Vande Bharat repatriation mission. A total of 63 people from Karnataka registered to board this flight. “But something happened and we were told that only Tamil Nadu people can board the Chennai flight,” said Srujan Reddy, a process consultant from Bengaluru who went to Dhaka on work in March.

According to Reddy, the first phase of the Vande Bharat Mission had six flights from Dhaka to Delhi, Mumbai and Jammu & Kashmir. In the second phase, there is one flight from Dhaka that is meant for Jammu & Kashmir students, he said.

“We’ve been repeatedly asking the Indian High Commission here for an update,” he said. “We are 70-80 people from Karnataka here. Some of us have lost jobs, struggling to pay rents and some like me who came on business.”

Running out of money to pay Rs 7,000 per day at a hotel, Reddy has moved into the house of an Andhra Pradesh friend. He was to leave Dhaka on March 24, the last day for domestic flights to operate. “My ticket to Bengaluru was booked from Agartala, which is about six hours away from Dhaka. I was sent back by the authorities, saying it’ll only be a week before they can allow him to pass,” Reddy said.

For medical student Safiya Nihaal, heartbreak is unfolding slowly at her hostel. “I live with some Kolkata students who will fly back home in a week or so. I’ll be left alone and I’m really worried,” she said.

Nihaal went to Dhaka in December last. “The Indian High Commission here has no update for us. I want to return to my grandparents in Bengaluru. My parents are in Kuwait and I can’t go there because I won’t be allowed.”

Besides the deluge of emails they have been sending to the authorities, these Kannadigas have also reached out to the Prime Minister’s Office and Chief Minister’s Office seeking help.

Deputy Chief Minister CN Ashwath Narayan said he was contacted on May 10. “I got the chief secretary to talk to the Ministry of External Affairs. I was told there’ll be a direct flight to Bengaluru and then I was assured that they will get on the Chennai flight. I will follow it up again and we’ll try to help them come back soon,” Narayan told DH.