ISLAMABAD: India on Tuesday accepted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s offer of a special plane to fly 11 Indian nationals to India, after they reached Karachi aboard PNS ‘Aslat’, after being evacuated from Yemen.

Aslat had sailed from Yemen through what the Foreign Office described was “a discreetly planned exercise from Ash Sihhr port which also saw 148 Pakistanis being evacuated.” These 11 Indian nationals will now fly to New Delhi on Wednesday, say Indian diplomats, some of them have already reached Karachi to facilitate their nationals.

Spokesperson at Foreign Office earlier told The News, “All the foreigners traveling to Karachi on the ship will be facilitated on arrival with transit visa etc”.Reaction has been positive from both countries where ordinary citizens have welcomed Sharif’s offer of flying out these evacuees, with many commenting that when they want both countries can be ‘humane’ in their dealing with each other.

The news about Pakistan’s magnanimous offer first came from Pakistan’s High Commissioner Abdul Basit who tweeted, “Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has offered a special aircraft to the Indian High commission in Islamabad to send back the 11 Indian citizens.”

After the offer, discussions were held at India’s Ministry of External Affairs and a decision was taken that New Delhi would take up Pakistan’s offer.“India accepts Pakistan’s offer to fly back from Karachi by special plane 11 Indians evacuated by Pakistani naval ship from Yemen”, Syed Akbarudin the outgoing spokesperson at the Ministry of External Affairs wrote in a tweet.

Earlier, 17 Pakistani nationals were also evacuated by an Indian aircraft. Initially when Pakistan decided to evacuate the 11 Indian nationals, High Commissioner Dr TCA Raghavan told The News, “On behalf of my government, I had conveyed to the Pakistan Foreign Secretary that this is greatly appreciated and is precisely the spirit in which such humanitarian issues

are to be responded”.

Recently, Pakistan had unilaterally also decided in a goodwill gesture to return to India 57 fishing boats that had strayed into Pakistan’s waters.“This decision by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in May 2014 when he had visited India was greatly appreciated. We are glad that the boats have now returned. This was logistically not an easy task as the boats have been in custody for sometime and they had to be made seaworthy”, Raghavan told The News at the time.

