313 Bangladeshis return from India, 169 Indians leave

A total of 313 more stranded Bangladeshis returned home from Bangalore and Chennai today while 169 Indians left here on the same day for Srinagar by a separate chartered flight under the ongoing repatriation drive conducted by the Bangladesh and Indian governments amid flight suspension due to COVID-19 pandemic.

A ferry flight of Biman Bangladesh Airlines landed at HSIA from South Indian city of Bangalore at 6:40 pm today bringing back 144 Bangladeshi citizens, spokesperson of the airlines Deputy General Manager (PR) Tahera Khondokar told media.

Earlier, another chartered flight of US-Bangla airlines landed at HSIA at 3 pm bringing back 164 adults and five infants Bangladeshis from Chennai, airlines sources said.

In the morning, a chartered flight of Air Indian took off from HSIA for the Indian city of Srinagar carrying 169 Indian citizens, mostly students, Indian High Commission source said here.

On May 8, New Delhi started taking its nationals, who had been stuck here amid lockdown due to outbreak of deadly coronavirus, back home planning to run seven chartered flights from Dhaka by this week in the first phase of repatriation.

After successfully evacuating more than 2000 stranded Bangladeshis from India by ferry flights in two phases, Dhaka is now operating its third phase of repatriation flight operation to bring the rest of its citizens home from different Indian cities.

Apart from today's flight, more chartered flights have been planned to operate from New Delhi and Chennai to Dhaka through the national flag carrier Biman as well as the US-Bangla Airlines under the third phase of repatriation operation.

On Tuesday, Bangladesh High Commission in New Delhi in a statement said so far more than 3000 Bangladeshis returned home from India through both air and land ports since the neighbouring country declared nationwide lockdown there to contain the outbreak of coronavirus.

As per the government decision, all the returnee Bangladeshis would have to be sent to a 14-day institutional quarantine under the management of the Armed Forces Division (AFD) if they fail to show medical certificates at the airports on their arrival here.

Besides India, Bangladesh also repatriated stranded Bangladeshis from the UK, Australia, Thailand, Singapore and Myanmar while more chartered flights have also been planned to bring back Bangladeshi nationals from the USA, and Malaysia this week.

On May 5, Bangladesh extended the ongoing ban on flight operation for the fifth consecutive time till May 16 to and from all European countries and the nations including India that restricted the entry of Bangladeshis to their territories as well as on all domestic routes over the coronavirus scare.

Other countries, including the USA, the UK, Canada, Turkey, Australia, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Bhutan, Myanmar, South Korea and Indonesia and different European countries so far operated several special chartered flights amid the flight suspension to repatriate their citizens from here.