A Supreme Court Bench led by Chief Justice of India S.A. Bobde is scheduled to urgently hear on Monday a plea by Nagapattinam resident Santha Muthulingam, whose husband is stranded along with 860 other Indian fishermen and labourers in Iran on account of the Coronavirus pandemic.
Ms. Muthulingam’s plea, which is listed on the top of the list of cases before the Chief Justice, highlights the distress of men living in their fishing boats and tin sheds, uncertain of what the future holds for them.
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The men who hail from Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Gujarat had been in Iran on longer-term visas since December last year to pursue their livelihood. Their flights from Iran were cancelled in March due to COVID-19 spread, her petition explained.
The 29-year-old homemaker said that these men, stuck in Iran, were the sole breadwinners of their families. Their absence, in this time of lockdown, left behind emotionally stranded families drained of resources. Ms. Muthulingam said she and her three children were in dire straits like many other families of the stranded fishermen.
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The petition, represented by advocates Paari Vendhan and Pirabu Subramanian, urged the court to direct the immediate evacuation of the fishermen and workers stuck in Bandar-e-Moqam, a coastal village of Hormozgan province, and the Lavan Island in Iran.
It said that the men had received no help either from the Embassy or the Iran government.
She said she had approached the District Collector on April 2 and was informed that the issue was with the Ministry of External Affairs and “they will bring back those citizens who are tested negative for coronavirus”.
Ms. Muthulingam said the “irony is that neither was any test undertaken so far nor has anyone visited them (fishermen)”.
The petition said the “stranded men are struggling to survive without any medical facilities, food and water supplies for the past 25 days”.
Ms. Muthulingam said an argument that “I will take you back if you are not infected” was definitely not the Indian way of doing things. Such an attitude by the government was “unacceptable in any civilised democracy”, that too, when countries such as the U.S. and France were repatriating their citizens in the wake of the pandemic.
