The largest civil evacuation in history of the world wouldn’t have been possible without the efforts of Mathunny Mathews, aka Sunny Mathews or ‘Toyota’ Mathews, the Indian businessman who was instrumental in bringing home safely the 1,70,000 Indians stranded in Kuwait during the Iraqi invasion in 1990. On May 20, the inspirer of Akshay Kumar’s character Ranjit Katyal and the real-life hero of the film Airlift died at 81 in Kuwait. His funeral rites would be held at his hometown Eraviperoor in Kerala.
Akshay who portrayed a character that amalgamated Mathunny and Harbhajan Vedi tweeted, “Extremely sad news, was an honour to portray him onscreen. Thoughts and prayers with his family.” The director of the film Raja Krishna Menon too joined Akshay by posting, “RIP #SunnyMatthews he played such a huge part in my life another life he impacted positively.”
