Plea to have MEA help Indian in Iraq disposed

Mumbai: The Bombay high court has disposed off a petition filed by Imran Sopariwala’s wife seeking court’s directions for the ministry of external affairs to get in touch with Iraqi government through diplomatic channels to get her husband back to India after being illegally detained there.

The petition was disposed off after the Additional Solicitor General Anil Singh informed the high court that the Indian Embassy met Iraqi authorities and is doing their best to help Mr Sopariwala get back to India.

Advocate Shehzad Naqvi informed the division bench of Justice Ranjit More and Justice Prakash Naik that petitioner Sayyed Kainat got married to Sopariwala on January 9 and few days later, the couple while on a pilgrimage to holy Shia tombs in Iran and Iraq, boarded a bus to travel to Iraq. On February 24, they reached the Iran-Iraq border, where the Iraqi border police detained Mr Sopariwala without giving any reason. Sayyed then called the Indian Embassy and informed them about her husband’s detention. She was assured by the embassy that they would look into the matter but later received no response from them and had to return to India on March 10.

In India, she came to know that the Iraqi police had arrested her husband in connection with an ongoing legal battle between Mr Sopariwala’s former employee Shehzad Hemani and his Dutch wife, Nadia Rashid. Ms Rashid had filed a complaint in Netherlands that Mr Hemani had kidnapped their daughter and took her to India.

According to the Iraqi police, Mr Sopariwala was in Netherlands with his boss at the time when the girl was kidnapped and they suspect that he had assisted him in kidnapping the girl and so a red-corner notice was issued against him as well.