'Terrified and uncertain': Bengaluru resident shares experience in Iran

Bengaluru: “We were very scared and were alert for any sounds that we could hear. Everything felt very uncertain until we reached the Indian Embassy and made it safely back home to Karnataka,” said 47-year-old Assad Abbas, a gems and jewellery businessman from Bengaluru.

The Richmond Town resident was in Qom, Iran, with seven family members on a pilgrimage since May 26. They landed in Bengaluru on Saturday morning with eight others after Iran opened its airspace to facilitate evacuation of people, amid ongoing hostilities with Israel.

The rest of the returnees - including an MBBS student, a tourist, and two businessmen - are relatives and close family friends of Assad, all of whom are natives of Alipur, a village approximately 70 km north of Bengaluru. They landed at 11.30 am in the city.

“We were supposed to return on June 16 via Sharjah. But we learnt three days before our departure that the airport was closed. We were terrified; communication with our family here was cut off. On June 14, we received a message from the Embassy on an Alipur WhatsApp group, and we were asked to fill our details so that we could be facilitated out of the country,” he told DH over a call.

The family spent three days in Qom before they were shifted to the Mashhad and put on a flight to Delhi on Friday. “It is not as bad as it is being reported, we were scared but we felt safe as there was no public panic,” Assad asserted.

Ten students, natives of Bengaluru and Alipur, are due to reach Bengaluru by Saturday night, said Syed Hakim Raza, President, Indo-Iran Chamber of Commerce and Industry. The rescue efforts are being coordinated by the Indian Embassy, the Government of Karnataka and Gauribidanur MLA K H Puttaswamy Gowda. With nearly 25,000 residents, 90% of Alipur’s population are Shia Muslims, the dominant community in Iran.