A Hyderabadi woman, who is living in war-torn Sudan and travelling home by transiting through Saudi Arabia got stranded when Saudi Arabian officials barred her from boarding a flight as they discovered a lapse in her passport.
Thirty-five-year- old Syeda Maleka, a native of Jahanuma in Hyderabad, was an unwanted guest at King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh when authorities found that woman traveling on an expired passport and debarred her from flying.
Like many poverty-stricken women of Hyderabad’s Old City, Maleka was married off to a Sudanese man who is double her age some fifteen years ago.
Now, mother of four children – three sons and a daughter – all born in Sudan and nationals of that country. Maleka remains Bharatiya Nari as she still holds Indian Passport which was issued from Hyderabad in 2010 and expired in 2020. She also spent some time in the UAE.
Maleka did not notice her passport’s expiry date and was living comfortably with her children and husband in Sudan. She opted not to return home under the Operation Kaveri scheme in April that evacuated Indian nationals during the Sudanese armed conflict.
As a loving mother, she couldn’t leave her children, who are Sudanese by nationality, and return home to India.
She was desperate to visit India and see her family and she boarded a Sudanese Airways flight from Sudan to Riyadh on Wednesday.
From there, She travelled to Hyderabad on Air India where the officials found out that her passport expired three years ago and she was barred from boarding.
Herculean task for passport
The plight of Maleka was brought to notice by prominent social workers Shihab Kotthukad and Naushad Alawa who in turn contacted the Indian Embassy in Riyadh.
A passport or travel document can only be issued upon the personal appearance of the applicant, however, Maleka was not able to come out from the transit area to the Indian Embassy.
On humanitarian grounds, Indian Embassy officials reached her beyond their regular working hours on the last working day of the week to help and issued an emergency certificate that enabled her to reach India on Friday. “
Since the Indian Embassy is closed in Sudan, I wanted to renew the passport in Hyderabad”, she said.
In Saudi Arabia, a passport must be valid for six months at least to travel to other countries.
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