After coming to know of student’s ordeal in Tanzania on TNM, Sushma Swaraj offers help

Sushma asked Kannan to provide the name of the Officer in the Indian High Commission in Tanzania, who dealt with her in an unfriendly manner.
After coming to know of student’s ordeal in Tanzania on TNM, Sushma Swaraj offers help
After coming to know of student’s ordeal in Tanzania on TNM, Sushma Swaraj offers help
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Proving once again that she is a woman of action, External Affairs minister Sushma Swaraj offered help to an Indian student who was stranded in Tanzania and needed assistance.

The News Minute had carried a blog written by Charanya Kannan, who is a student at Harvard Business School, where she had detailed her ordeal when she went to Tanzania for a course and got mugged.

Kannan was part of a group of 40 students who had gone to Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, for a course on public private partnerships.

She says in her blog that one day just as she was walking down the footpath along with four others, a biker suddenly appeared from nowhere and snatched her bag.

She adds, “I tried to resist but he accelerated and I got dragged along. When my head hit the unsympathetic asphalt, I knew I had to let go. Before I could release the cross shouldered bag, I got dragged a few feet. I got up and was surprised I could get up, and turned to look at the four others who were walking with me.”  

“I had lost two phones, cash, credit cards, driver’s license and worst of all, my passport, and had gained bruises all over my hands and legs and one particularly noticeable bump in my head for the bargain.”

This incident happened near the Indian Embassy office. She says that when she met the consular officer at the Embassy and told her plight, he was least helpful.

The officer said, ““You can’t return this Saturday. Passport issue takes 3 weeks here. I can give you an emergency certificate with which you can go back to India and apply for passport from there. That will take 2-3 months in India.”

While Kannan reasoned with the officer that she could not afford to stay in Tanzania for three weeks since her semester was starting soon, he refused to budge.

“Nothing can be done. Even if you give me two crore rupees, nothing can be done," was his response, she says in her blog.

Kannan is now back in the US as she managed to get her US visa with the help of her embassy friends in different parts of the world.  

You can read her blog here.

Meanwhile, Sushma Swaraj in a series of tweets, asked Kannan to provide the name of the Officer in the Indian High Commission in Tanzania, who dealt with her in an unfriendly manner.

She also asked the student to register on madad.gov.in and tweet the problem to facilitate immediate help.

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