Mangaluru, Apr 3: A delegation of Social Democratic Party of India on Monday visited Mangaluru International Airport and urged authorities concerned to take action against those staff who tend to harass Middle-East bound Muslim travellers.
The delegation, comprised of Haneef Khan Kodaje, DK district president of SDPI, Alphonso Franco, Karnataka state secretary of SDPI, Athavullah Jokatte, DK district general secretary of SDPI among others, held discussions with the Airport Director J T Radhakrishna.
Later, addressing a media conference, the SDPI leaders said that a few staff at the Airport deliberately harass and ill-treat Muslim passengers for reasons best know to them.
“When Mangaluru Airport secured the international tag in spite of Maharashtra's severe opposition at the national level, the joy it gave to expatriates of Mangaluru, Kasargod, Kannur and other neighbourhood cities was inexplicable. However, because of a few staff the Airport is losing its reputation, they said.
They said that over the last couple of years many cases of ill treatment of Gulf bound Muslim passengers reported from the Airport. While few harassed passengers raised their voice, many passengers did not speak up and did not make it public, they said.
“Tearing the pages of passport and damaging the page of visa stamped, harassing the female passengers by saying they are carrying gold more than the limit, troubling the passengers by saying their luggage weighing more than limit and insisting for extra payment, asking irrelevant questions and threatening them etc. have become common phenomena at the Airport,” they said, adding that the silence of the higher authorities encouraging such corrupt officers.
“All those officials who have ill-treated and harassed the passengers should be dismissed and the authorities should take necessary steps to prevent the recurrences of such harassments,” they said, adding that the SDPI would stage a massive protest in front of the Airport along with progressive organisations if the complaints of harassment continued.
The SDPI delegation handed over a list of cases of ill-treatment by the officials at the Airport to its director. This list is as follows:
November 16, 2016:
A Mangaluru based Muslim family was harassed at the Airport and sent back home. Officials said they can't fly as the passport page was torn. In reality it was not torn.
March 10, 2017:
Same is the case with a woman hailing from Manjeshwar who was about to fly with her three children. Her passport page was intentionally torn by the immigration staff himself and the family was denied boarding pass. With the same passport, they flew from Kozhikode Airport with no such issue. The woman’s husband Abdul Khader, said it cost him Rs 1.5 lakhs.
July 2015:
Hassan, a resident of Mangaluru was returning to Dubai after vacation. He was prevented from boarding the flight on the pretext of missing visa page. According to Hassan, the page was removed by the staff himself.
March 26th, 2017:
A Dubai bound Muslim family of eight members reached Mangaluru Airport. They had to face lot of problems from immigration team when the team officials said that one child passenger among them can’t be allowed to fly as its ticket was not confirmed. The immigration officials reportedly shouted at the head of the family and asked him to fly leaving the child at the Airport.
Later, when it was proved that the claim of the officials was wrong, they took all the eight passports and returned only seven. When the family demanded the passport of the child, they claimed that they had received only seven. Meanwhile, another passenger noticed that the passport was kept beneath a file.
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