The wife of one of the two Indians from a Goa-based company, who have been stranded in Iran, has approached Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar to seek help in securing their return to India.
Vadodara resident Sanket Pandya (36) and Mohammed Hussain Khan (from Haryana), working with a private firm, had been allegedly detained and their passports taken away by the engineering firm in December last year following a business dispute with their Goa-based company.
Sanket's wife Priti Pandya has written a letter to Parrikar, saying her husband and Khan were sent to Zanjan city in Iran on November 23 after their Goa-based company Power Engineers (India) Pvt Ltd deputed them there to commission a power-related project for which they were granted visa for a period of one month.
"Both of them were part of a team, which was deputed to Iran by the company. Other members of the team have already returned to India. The Iranian company took away the passports of my husband and Khan on December 17, under the pretext of stamping them for their return journey to India," she said in the letter to Parrikar.
Sanket and Khan were shifted to a hotel in Tehran in the last week of January after she took up the matter with the External Affairs Ministry.
Since then the duo has been staying in a hotel in Iran and the Iranian authorities are not allowing them to return to India.
"I am seeking your intervention because the company in your state is not making sincere efforts in resolving its dispute with its counterpart. The Iranian company has become a cause of great concern and worry for me, our two minor kids and mother-in-law, as my husband is the sole bread winner of the family," the letter further reads.
Priti had earlier met Political Secretary to Congress president Sonia Gandhi, Ahmed Patel, External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid in this connection and had also written letters to Sonia Gandhi, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi to draw their attention to the issue.
