Even as the Ministry of External Affairs is currently obsessed with getting back over 10,000 Indians who are reportedly stuck in Saudi Arabia, three families in Hyderabad wait for similar effort to be put in to secure the release of their loved ones from ISIS captivity in Libya.
On July 29 last year, four professors – two from Hyderabad and two from Karnataka – teaching at Sirte university in Libya were travelling to the airport to catch the flight back to India when they were kidnapped by ISIS militants. Rather inexplicably, they decided to release the two professors from Karnataka after a few hours but the two Hyderabadis – Prof Gopikrishna and Prof Balram – continue to be in their captivity for over year now. While 40-year-old Gopikrishna has been working in Libya since 2007, 50-year-old Balram was in Libya for the past four years.
“I speak to officials in the MEA every second day. Everytime I am told talks are going on and that they will be released,” says Sridevi, Balram’s wife in Hyderabad, who teaches at a college in Secunderabad.
Muralikrishna, the brother of Gopikrishna knocked at every possible door to secure the release of the two
professors. From Prime minister Narendra Modi to Sushma Swaraj to Venkaiah Naidu. “It has been a year now. We have no idea how they are. The Government of India’s standard response is that there is nothing to worry and that both professors are safe,” says Muralikrishna, whose patience is wearing thin.
Prof Gopikrishna was teaching computer science while Prof Balram taught English at Sirte University. Initial reports last year suggested that some of their students were part of the ISIS militant ranks which ensured they were not harmed. But there is no information on what they have been doing since their abduction.
In September, Dr K Ramamurthy, a general physician from Andhra Pradesh and P Samal, a lab technician from Odisha – were kidnapped from their hospital in Ibn-e-Sina area of Sirte. While Dr Samal was released after eleven days, Dr Ramamurthy is still captive and reportedly lodged with the two professors. Dr Ramamurthy was practising in Libya for the last 16 years and was in fact planning to return to India as trouble had broken out there. His family is now in Hyderabad, hoping for a breakthrough.
“There has been no help from anyone except for MEA assuring us that he is alive,” says Pavan, Dr Ramamurthy’s son. Pavan, who has done his M.Tech is working in a firm in Hyderabad for a monthly salary of Rs 10,000 and has to take care of his mother and sister. “My father would have also lost all the money he had saved in Libya,” says Pavan.
The families were hoping that the trio would be released during the holy month of Ramadan but their hopes were belied.
