NEW DELHI: It is not everyday that a senior Union minister gets caught on the wrong foot over a case of mistaken identity, that too when the person involved is the Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan.
For 21-year-old Rachna (name changed), an Assamese girl studying medicine at theUkraine’s Ivano-Frankivsk National Medical University, a trip back home to Guwahati in a British Airways flight for her holidays landed her on July 4 in Istanbul’s Ataturk airport which was hit by a horrifying suicide bomb attack that very day killing 45 people dead and injuring hundreds.
At Istanbul, she was supposed to change her flight en route to Mumbai. Normally a transit visa is not a problem but enhanced security because of the terror attack came in the way and the panic-striken girl was detained for hours in a room within the airport on the ground that she did not have a valid transit visa.
“That was when we tweeted to Sushma Swaraj madam for help who promptly responded and ensured that my daughter flew back safely to Mumbai via Dubai with the help of Indian embassy officials in Turkey,” the girl’s grateful mother told this newspaper on the phone.
In Mumbai, a family friend by the name of Shahrukh — a fellow medical student in Ukraine-and his family came forward and ensured that the traumatised girl received adequate rest in their house before boarding her scheduled flight to Guwahati.
Meanwhile, with many well-wishers tweeting how Shahrukh Khan, the Bollywood actor, had helped the girl, it caught the attention of local TV channels who went on the overdrive to report the good Samaritan act.
It caught the attention of the external affairs minister too, whose tweet: “That’s a noble gesture from Shahrukh Khan” must not have failed to confound the film star.
The faux pas was revealed to this reporter after a call to the girl’s family. Understandably, the Union minister’s Twitter account later on took off the tweet.
In the end, as the girl’s mother said, “Alls well that ends well”.
