Eight Bangladeshi tourists, including three women, are stranded in Odisha’s Malkangiri district with expired visas.
The group had made the trip to attend the Dola Purnami festival at Poteru and meet some distant relations in the district. During the 1970s, several Bangladeshi refugee families were rehabilitated in Malkangiri.
Their visas were to expire on expire on April 8 and extended to April 31. The Malkangiri district administration, which has been providing them with essential rations, has not been able to help them return to Bangladesh as it is an international issue. The eight Bangladeshis are now staying at MV-90, which stands for Malkangiri Village-90. Several villages in the district have such names. Some relatives helped them find a house to stay here.
The eight tourists are Kalidash Sarkar (60), Sabita Sarkar (55) and their daughter Chaitali Sarkar (23); Rasamay Ray (55) and his wife Rita Ray (45); and three others — Subir Kanti Biswas (52), Pradip Mandal (36) and Ratindra Nath Sardar (38). All of them were from the Khulna district in Bangladesh.
Speaking to The Hindu over phone, Ms. Chaitali Sarkar said, “We have been asked by our Embassy to buy flight tickets, but we cannot afford to. We have already spent all our money and don’t even have enough left to hire a vehicle to take us to the Bangladesh border.”
The group entered India by road via the Bhojadanga border check post on January 8 to reach Malkangiri district on January 11. They said they attended the Shivaratri celebration at Kangorukonda on February 21 and the Poteru Dola Purnima festival on March 9. As they were planning their return, the declaration of “Janata curfew” on March 22 and the start of the lockdown in India from March 25 shattered their hopes.
“Our return will not be possible unless the governments of Bangladesh and India take up the issue of our plight,” Ms. Chaitali said.
