In a major diplomatic win, India secured the release of eight Indian Navy veterans who were jailed and sentenced to death in Qatar by authorities there on espionage charges. Seven out of those eight veterans returned to India and thanked the government for ensuring their release. These veterans were working for Dahra Global Technologies, a defence services provider company based in Qatar.

The eight veterans – Captain Navtej Singh Gill, Captain Birendra Kumar Verma, Captain Saurabh Vasisht, Commander Amit Nagpal, Commander Purnendu Tiwari, Commander Sugunakar Pakala, Commander Sanjeev Gupta and Sailor Ragesh Gopakumar – suffered several ordeals in the last one and a half years but their long wait to return home ended on Monday as seven of them landed in India after their release was secured.

This is not the first time that India has ensured the return of its citizens who were caught in the midst of a geopolitical crisis. India on several occasions has rescued citizens from war zones and even during the Covid-19 conflict, India carried out one of the largest rescue operations and brought back home six million Indians.

HERE IS A LIST OF SIMILAR DIPLOMATIC WINS FOR INDIA:

Operation Raahat: In 2015, Indian Army launched ‘Operation Rahat’ to evacuate more than 4,000 Indian citizens and other foreign nationals from Yemen as the Yemeni civil war broke out. Then-foreign minister Sushma Swaraj said that it took one phone call from Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Saudi king Salman to ensure the rescue of Indians from the war-torn nation.

Kerala Nurses Rescued from ISIS-ruled Areas: Then-foreign minister Sushma Swaraj scored a massive diplomatic win when she ensured the return of 46 nurses, majority of them from Kerala, who were stuck in Iraq’s Tikrit as Islamic State started taking over major parts of Syria and Iraq. 46 nurses were evacuated from Iraq after they were taken away by Islamic State terrorists to Mosul against their will. The Indian government, led by Narendra Modi, whose tenure had just begun following massive victory in the 2014 elections, prioritised the return of the nurses and ensured that they were brought back to India. Indian officials worked round the clock with their Iraqi counterparts and brought back the nurses from Mosul to Erbil and then from Erbil to New Delhi and then Kochi.