Courtesy Asgar Ali Indian pilgrims in coronavirus-hit Iran are waiting for the Government of India to evacuate them.

NEW DELHI — At least 800 Indian nationals, 252 of whom have tested positive for COVID-19 commonly known as the novel coronavirus, are stranded in Iran with no clear path back home HuffPost India has learnt.

Their plight, they say, is a consequence of the Indian government’s refusal to evacuate its own citizens who have tested positive for the virus. Several of those still in Iran are healthy, but will not leave as they cannot abandon a sick family member in a foreign land. Worse, the absence of any support from the Indian embassy to isolate and quarantine has forced the healthy to share the same hotels as the sick — potentially hastening the spread of the highly contagious coronavirus.

If repatriated, these Indian citizens would treble the number of COVID-19 positive cases on Indian soil, casting India’s attempts to contain the virus in a very different light. Thus far, 110 positive cases have been reported on Indian soil.



These 252 individuals are part of an 800-strong group of Indians, most of whom had travelled from Ladakh to the holy city of Qom on a pilgrimage. There are also other Indian students and fishermen stranded in Iran. With nearly 14,000 COVID-19 cases and 724 deaths, Iran is the worst hit nation after China and Italy.

The Government of India barred commercial flights from Iran on 26 February, stranding hundreds of Indians like the group of pilgrims from Ladakh. The Narendra Modi government says they have evacuated 334 Indians from Iran from March 10 to March 15. But in a separate announcement, government officials have made clear that India will initially evacuate only those who have tested negative for the novel coronavirus. “Evacuation does not mean we will bring everybody back,” Additional Secretary Dammu Ravi told reporters in New Delhi, last week. “Negative cases would be brought back.”

HuffPost India spoke to one pilgrim and two tour guides, who said they were part of an informal committee set up to parlay between the pilgrims, the Iranian government and the Indian embassy in Tehran.

Their account reveals the fallout of the Indian government’s policy of only evacuating the healthy, while seemingly abandoning the sick and needy to their fate in a foreign land, and offers a glimpse of the COVID-19 induced chaos swirling through Iran.

“You can’t just say I’m bothered about the negative and bring them home and not care about the positives,” said T Sundararaman, former director of the National Health Systems Resource Centre. “A sensible policy for the government of India would have been to speak with the Iranian authorities to take care of these people and provide a certain degree of comfort.”

“Our Mission is also maintaining close contact with those still left in Iran and taking all possible steps to ensure their safety and well being,” Ravish Kumar, spokesperson for the Ministry of External Affairs, said in response to the questions that HuffPost India had sent to the MEA. “We look forward to continued support from our nationals in Iran for a smooth evacuation process in the days to come,” he said.

Positives and negatives in the same hotels

On 1-2 March, Indian pilgrims in Qom were contacted by the Indian Embassy in Tehran.

Asgar Ali, a 44-year-old tour guide from Leh, who heads the committee that is coordinating with the Indian authorities, said a team of doctors had come from India and began testing the pilgrims in a local hospital in Qom.

When locals in the hospital objected, fearing the spread of the virus, the pilgrims were ferried by bus to the Indian Embassy in Tehran where their mouth-swabs were taken and sent for testing back home in Pune, Ali said.

Thus far, Ali said, the Embassy had informed them that 252 pilgrims had tested positive with a further 20 results still awaited.

Yet, as the test results were awaited, all the pilgrims — both corona-positive and negative — were living in the same hotels.

“The government tested us with the expectation that some would test positive and others negative, but did not separate us. We have been living and eating under the same room for two weeks,” said Ali. “There are no positives and negatives left. We don’t know who is infected and who is not.”