Travel ban: Duo who visited Yemen detained

The immigration officials, while checking the documents of the passengers on the Air Arabia flight from Sharjah that arrived at the Chennai airport on Monday midnight found Sultan Mohamed (55) of Ramanathapuram and Sudarmani (33) of Madurai had visited Yemen while the Indian government had banned the visit to the country.

Both of them were detained and during the inquiry, they told the officials they went to Sharjah for work two years ago and the private firm which they were working asked them to go to Yemen for a few months and they were unaware that Indians should not travel to that country. However, the immigration officials were not satisfied with the response and both of them were handed over to the Chennai airport police on Monday morning. The police have registered a case and inquiry is on.

Meanwhile, in another incident, a 40-year-old man who arrived from Dubai using a fake passport was arrested on Sunday night. The immigration officials were checking the travel documents of the passengers who arrived from Dubai. A passenger submitted his passport which was mentioned as Basir Ali of Tanjore. The officials, on scanning the passport, found that it was fake. Later, during the inquiry, he was identified as Sivakumar of Tanjore who had visited Dubai on a tourist visa two years ago and stayed there permanently.