Why should you be double conscious at Indian Airports

Teen siblings not permitted to fly back to Canada as passports did not have entry stamp

Carelessness by immigration authorities left two teenaged India-origin Canadians stranded at the airport at Amritsar as they were not allowed to board their plane back home on January 25 as their passports did not have the entry stamp that should have been put by the authorities when they had landed at Amritsar some 10 days ago. Missing such an entry makes their stay in India illegal. The matter took yet another serious note when the security personnel took no action, considering that their ‘illegal’ entry was a security lapse on the eve of Republic Day. Was not doing  stamping for entry a deliberate attempt.

The case pertains to the ordeal faced by Sanjeet Singh Kundi (19) and his sister Gursonia Kaur Kundi (16), residents of Guelph,ON. Both  were visiting India after 10 years, to attend a wedding. Not allowed to board, the Immigration and security personnel told them to simply get out of the airport. The mother, Jatinder Kaur Dhanoa, later checked and found out that the passport of her younger son, Rajan Singh Kundi (13), who had come with Sanjeet and Gursonia on the January 16 flight, was also not stamped.

The matter got handled in yet another different manner when a leading daily from Chandigarh highlighted their case, and eventually, with no reasons given and underlining that it was more a bureaucratic tangle than any illegality on their part, the kids got the stamp on Jan 27, though they suffered financial loss and a horrible experience. “I found three more passengers at the airport on Tuesday whose passports were not stamped by the immigration staff,” mother of Sanjeet and Gursonia has been quoted by the daily. She claimed travel agents told her “there is a racket of immigration officials at the airport who deliberately don’t stamp passports to extract money from NRIs”. For the teenagers, it meant crucial loss. “I am in the second semester of my construction engineering degree, and will lose a month of studies due to this faux pas. Gursonia will not be able to write her three exams of high school. It was a terrible experience. My sister, who is a minor, was stranded on the road at night. We don’t want to come to India again,”  Sanjeet has been quoted by the daily.