New Delhi, August 02 : Four Kashmir scholars, invited to a conference in Turkey, were denied boarding passes by the authorities concerned at the airport.
Mohammad Iqbal Rather, Showkat Dar, Mohammad Dawood Sofi, who study at Aligarh Muslim University, and Meraj-ud-din and Bilal Ahmad of Kashmir University, were scheduled to attend a nine-day summer school conference on the Concept of Social Justice in Islam at Konya in Turkey beginning Saturday, media reports said.
“My flight was scheduled at 4.30am on Thursday but airline’s staff at the Indira Gandhi International Airport, New Delhi did not issue boarding passes to us,” said Iqbal. Despite their insistence, the scholars were not told why they had been denied travel.
“Each of us had spent about Rs 50000 on tickets but the airline didn’t repay our money either,” Iqbal said a newspaper in Srinagar over phone. He said they have emailed a complaint with the Aeroflot heaquarters in Russia and the HRD ministry in India. “The airlines has assured us of an investigation into the issue,” he said, adding the “behavior of the staff was unusual”.
“I can’t explain how we were treated by the staff. We panicked and left the place after facing humiliation. We had reached on time and had completed online check-in,” he added. KU’s Islamic Studies department scholar Mehraj said when he learnt about the treatment meted out to his counterparts from Aligarh and Bilal, he didn’t book the ticket.
“Other scholars from India did not face the same ordeal and they went to the conference smoothly,” Mehraj said.