Tamil Nadu doctor detained in Russia; wife seeks help from Centre, State government

A Tamil Nadu doctor, detained by Russian authorities in Sochi in September, remains stranded without travel documents. His wife alleges harassment and ill-treatment in custody and has appealed to the Central and state governments to help bring him back safely

Chennai: What was supposed to be an interesting trip to Russia turned out to be an ordeal for a doctor hailing from Tamil Nadu’s Tiruvallur district after he was allegedly detained by Russian authorities in Sochi in September this year.

Dr K Jagadeeswaran’s wife appealed to the Central and state governments to intervene and help her in getting her husband extradited to India safely. Detailing the ordeal Jagadeeswaran went through in Russia, his wife, Yamini, told PTI that he was tortured and humiliated in custody for an unknown reason to them, and his health condition has deteriorated. Though he has been released now from custody, he lacked the documents required to travel to Moscow so that he could return to India.

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She said that Jagadeeswaran got a degree in medicine from an Armenian University in 2022 and they have been living in Armenia since then. The couple has a baby girl and wanted to visit their families in Tamil Nadu in August this year, she said.

“Since my husband is employed by a hospital in Armenia, we have been living there since 2022. It has been three years since our marriage. We just wanted to visit our families in Tamil Nadu and arrived here in August. I am from Chennai, while Jagadeeswaran hails from Tiruvallur. During our visit, my husband’s friend Shekhar Manikandan requested Jagadeeswaran to accompany him to Russia as he can converse well in the Russian language,” she told PTI in a brief interaction on Sunday.

His friend is running an educational consultancy in Russia and wanted Jagadeeswaran to accompany him under the tourist visa, she said. “They left on September 15 (from Chennai) and the ordeal started after they reached the Sochi airport,” she said.

They were taken for interrogation by the immigration authorities at the airport, she said. Seeing my husband’s passport and other documents, and after coming to know that Jagadeeswaran can converse well in Russian, the immigration authorities detained him along with his friend at the Sochi airport on September 16, she said.

However, the officials released Shekhar Manikandan after a week, and he was deported back to India, while Jagadeeswaran was not allowed to return. Later, he was detained by the police, stating he did not cooperate with the immigration officials since then, she alleged.

“The immigration authorities have told me that my husband disobeyed their orders and did not respond to their questions. That is why they detained him. But that is not true,” she said.

After they roped in a woman advocate in Sochi to take up his case, Jagadeeswaran was released and given only his passport. However, he was not given any other documents to make him eligible to travel in Russia, Yamini said, “Right now, he is under the custody of a Russian lawyer whom we hired. The Indian Embassy in Moscow informed us that he should reach Moscow from Sochi for a safe return to India. But, due to a lack of proper documents, he is unable to go to the Indian Embassy in Moscow”, she said.

“Instead of giving a proper explanation on why he had been detained, my husband had been harassed, humiliated by the authorities. He was not given proper food, and due to this, his health condition deteriorated. His sugar levels dropped to 1 per cent,” she said.

She said the family approached the Ministry of External Affairs in Delhi to find a solution, but it did not yield any desired results. “I had given a complaint to the BJP Tamil Nadu office here,” she said.

“Through the media, I sincerely request the Central and State governments to take steps for the safe and early release of my husband from Russia,” she said.