Love-lorn Lankan girl creates flutter at Chennai Airport

G. Saravanan

It was an unusual drama at the Chennai Airport in the early hours of Saturday when a Sri Lankan girl with a deportation order refused to board a Colombo-bound flight.

According to sources, Hanifa Nisha Rani was directed to return to Sri Lanka with an emergency visa by a Court in Andhra Pradesh after completing a two-year jail term for entering India with a fake Indian passport two years ago.

Rani lived in Kuwait and reportedly fell in love with an Andhra boy there. When he returned to India for good, Rani reportedly took a fake passport to land in India in search of her lover, to eventually get united with him.

But the love-struck girl was caught at the Hyderabad Airport for entering India with a fake passport and subsequently jailed for three years.

Since her conduct was good at prison, a local Court reduced her jail term by a year and ordered her deportation to Lanka.

Based on an Andhra Court's request, Sri Lankan Deputy High Commission in Chennai issued an Emergency Certificate (EC) for deportation in October first week.

After clearance from Andhra, two policemen brought her to Chennai, to be sent to Colombo.

After getting the boarding pass for a flight, Rani's behaviour changed dramatically at the airport lobby as she refused to board the aircraft. She even tore the EC and other documents needed for the travel.

She also pleaded with police officials and airline staff to allow her to stay in India so that she could continue to search for her lover for whom she had come from her homeland three years ago. Though Rani claimed she had no relatives now in Lanka, Deputy High Commission sources confirmed that her parents now live at Anuradhapura.

While airport sources said that she would be accommodated in any late-night flight to Colombo, Deputy High Commission sources said that her journey to Colombo is very likely to be delayed since she did not have her EC.

She now needs a new EC and it could be issued only after today, it is reliably learnt.

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