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29 March 2024

India to investigate maid’s death at Muscat airport

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By Staff

The Indian government is sending a senior official to investigate how the Indian Embassy in Oman failed to help a woman who stranded at the Muscat airport after she lost her passport.

India’s Minister of External Affairs SM Krishna told reporters in New Delhi on Tuesday that the official being sent to Muscat will report directly back to him, reported Press Trust of India.

The 40-year-old housemaid Beebi Lumbada from Kerala was last week returning to her homeland for good when she lost her passport.

She was a Qatar Airways flight from Muscat to Chennai and is believed to have lost her passport while transiting the Doha International Airport.

Sent back to Muscat, her port of origin, she was stranded at Seeb International Airport since she did not carry a travel document. Her Omani visa was already cancelled.

The woman died while being taken to a hospital after she suffered a cardiac arrest likely to have been caused by the trauma of being stranded with little help coming her way.

Media reports had earlier said Indian Embassy officials in Muscat had given repeated assurances to Qatar Airways, whose staff even tried to contact her former sponsor in vain.

However Overseas Indian Affairs Minister Vayalar Ravi told the Indian media: "The airport and airline authorities should have been more responsible. Valid papers are necessary but not more than a person's life."