‘Still very scared’: Indians share ‘horrifying’ experiences from Sudan as they land at Delhi airport

India has successfully flew a group of 360 citizens to New Delhi, who were earlier evacuated from Sudan to Saudi Arabia, in an ongoing operation to bring out several more people from the conflict-ridden northeast African country.

Those who were rescued narrated their ordeals being in the strife-torn country as the Sudanese Army and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) are battling against each other for power.

Sukhvinder Singh was among the first batch of Indian nationals who returned to Delhi. An engineer in his mid-40s, Singh said he was ‘still very scared’ and recalled that he felt being ‘on a deathbed’ amid the conflict between two major forces in the country. “We were living in one area, confined to one room. It was like we were on a deathbed,” he told news agency PTI after arriving at the Delhi airport.

Explaining the evacuation process, Singh told the news agency that the trip to reach Port Sudan in a bus full of 200 people was ‘very risky’. “We contacted the Indian embassy and buses for around 200 people were arranged. A road trip was very risky. Only God knows how we reached Port Sudan,” he said, adding that the warring groups could’ve shot anybody ‘depending on their mood’. “If we say we are Indians, they let us go,” he added.

Another citizen, who was a factory worker there, was under disbelief and expressed that he ‘returned almost after dying’, and made a vow that he would ‘never return to Sudan’. “I will do anything in this country but won’t go back,” he added.

India has so far airlifted 670 citizens from Sudan and the rescue mission – ‘Operation Kaveri’ – is still underway, aimed at evacuating more Indian nationals before the end of a tenuous ceasefire that both the military and paramilitary forces in the country agreed.

Tasmer Singh described his experience as horrifying and added that the situation he faced in the northeast African nation was unimaginable. “We were like a dead body, roaming in a small house without power, water. We never imagined that we will face this kind of a situation in our lives but thank God, we are alive,” he said.