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Lawyer moves SC seeking evacuation of daughter stuck in UK
New Delhi: A lawyer has moved the Supreme Court seeking the evacuation of her daughter and other Indian students stranded in the UK because of the ban imposed last
New Delhi: A lawyer has moved the Supreme Court seeking the evacuation of her daughter and other Indian students stranded in the UK because of the ban imposed last month on international flight operations as part of measures taken to check the spread of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic.
Madhurima Mridul, the lawyer, filed a public interest litigation days after her husband, Delhi high court judge Siddharth Mridul, recused himself when a plea came before him on March 20 seeking the evacuation of a student from Scotland. The judge said his daughter was stranded in London while recusing himself. Siddharth Mridul heard a matter on March 27 regarding evacuation of Indians from Kazakhstan.
“Many such students are exposed to a greater risk of contracting COVID-19 due to being crammed into packed hostels with shared kitchen and bathroom facilities during the current lockdown imposed in the UK and are fighting for their survival,” the lawyer said in her petition.
The Supreme Court heard the petition on Tuesday and directed the Centre to respond to it by Monday.
The petition said India is probably the only country to have stopped the return of its citizens while other countries are making “all possible efforts” to repatriate theirs stranded abroad.
“It is also pertinent to note that countries with far greater incidence of mortality like China, Spain, Italy, Iran, South Korea and United States of America, too, have not imposed any embargo on the return of their nationals from foreign shores,” the petition said.
India has evacuated hundreds of its citizens from countries like Iran and Italy, which are among the worst-hit by the pandemic.
The petitioner cited data she has collected and said there are about 20,000 Indian students in the UK, where Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been moved to intensive care in hospital after his coronavirus symptoms worsened. The pandemic has killed over 5,000 people in Britain.
The petition said the students were finding it hard to survive on their limited available resources even as the threat of contracting the virus looms large. “Given the present circumstances, the students’ lives are at great risk without the basic necessities to sustain themselves. Many of these students are running out of finances and facing shortage of food and water. They have not been able to access any protective masks, gloves or sanitizers and are worried about contracting the deadly virus while miles away from their loved ones in India.”
Advocate Sunil Fernandes, who argued the petition, said a golden opportunity was lost recently when Indian flights were chartered by the UK and Germany this month to evacuate their citizens stranded in India.
The last of these flights returned from London empty on Tuesday. As of now, about 380 students are stranded at the Indian High Commission in London.
A bench of Chief Justice of India S A Bobde and justice L Nageswara Rao, which heard the matter, sought to know the number of Indian students stranded and asked solicitor general Tushar Mehta, who appeared for the Centre through video conferencing, about any alternate evacuation plan.