Friday 19 / April / 2024
Muscat: The body of Bhiku Prasad, the undocumented Indian worker who passed away on Tuesday night, will be flown back to India at the Indian government’s expense, a senior embassy official said.
Bhiku was battling for his life in a hospital in Muscat for the last few days.
“We will fly back his body to India. His medical bill and expenses for the repatriation of the body will be taken care of by the Indian Embassy,” a senior official told the Times of Oman (TOO).
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Prasad, from Uttar Pradesh in India, had come to the Sultanate hoping for a new life on a visitor visa.
After three months of looking for a job, he got one.
However, after joining the company, he collapsed on the third day at work. As his papers were still being processed, he was classified as an ‘undocumented’ worker.
Without the correct papers, he was stuck in a bureaucratic limbo, with no one ready to pay his medical bills. Had he come to Oman through the proper channels, his hospital treatment would have been covered.
According to medics, from day one, Prasad was in a critical state.
“There was bleeding in his brain,” medics said.
TOO had reported Prasad’s story last Sunday. On Sunday night, Sushma Swaraj, the Indian Minister for External Affairs, responded to the story and tweeted that if medics permit, he would be flown back.
Retweeting TOO’s news report on Prasad, the minister said medics in Oman had denied the Indian government permission to fly him back home as he was too ill to be moved.
“We wanted to fly Bhiku Prasad of Kushinagar, Uttar Pradesh in India. Oman doctors have denied permission. We are bearing his expenses because he is an Indian national,” the minister tweeted. However, Prasad passed away on Tuesday night.
The Indian government had implemented the e-Migrate system in August 2015, to ensure safe migration.
