Officials clueless on professor

It’s been more than five months since Balram and his Telugu colleague, assistant professor Gopi Krishna, were kidnapped by IS militants. It happened when the two were on their way to Tunisia’s airport to board a flight to India in July, 2015. Sridevi says, “We are eagerly waiting for them to return safely.” Last five months have not been easy for Sridevi and her two children. She made frequents calls to the Indian embassy in Tripoli and tried to contact the English department dean in Sirte University, under whom Balram had worked for some time.

“The faculty generally does not answer my calls. The dean must be busy with his own work. I keep in touch with him through another mediator, of Indian origin. I am told repeatedly that he is safe and will be released soon,” said Sridevi.

The Indian embassy, however, has started responding promptly after Sridevi and others met Prime Minister Modi and external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj in August. “Every second day, I get to talk to the Indian Embassy officials. Like me, they are also hopeful. In the third week of December, when rival sides in Libya signed a UN-brokered deal to form a unity government, it looked like things changed for the better in Libya,” Sridevi said.

Balram’s elder son, 18-year-old Vijay Bhaskar, is trying hard to stay focused on his engineering course in IIT Kharagpur. “I am giving him all the moral support. He is in the second year, and in these troubled times, he has proven himself to be strong,” said Sridevi adding that she was also supporting her younger son Madhusudhan, studying in Class VII. She has one appeal to her husband’s captors. “We are all going through a really tough time. Please do not harm the hostages and please release them.”