Cancelled flight, stranded in Dhaka: Triumphant archers endure ordeal

Kolkata: Indian archers endured a night of chaos when their return to the country from Dhaka after the Asian Championships was delayed by a day due to a cancelled flight, forcing them to stay at a “substandard shelter” after navigating through the violence-hit Bangladeshi capital without security.

Eleven members of the 23-strong squad, including two minors, were left stranded for nearly 10 hours at the airport amid repeated flight delays and a “complete absence of support” from the airline on which they were booked. The group, which included senior pros Abhishek Verma, Jyoti Surekha and Olympian Dhiraj Bommadevara, had reached the Dhaka airport on Saturday for their 9.30pm flight to Delhi, only to be told after boarding that the aircraft had developed a technical snag and would not take off.

It was at a time when Dhaka witnessed violence on the streets as it awaited a special tribunal’s verdict against deposed Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in a case of alleged crimes against humanity.

The archers, seven of them women, remained inside the terminal till 2am with no clarity. When the cancellation was finally announced, passengers were informed that no alternate flight would be arranged that night. The moment the team stepped out of the airport, their ordeal escalated.

They were herded into a “window-less local bus” and taken nearly half an hour away to a makeshift lodge which was like a “Dharamshala”, the country’s most decorated compound male archer Verma alleged.

The 36-year-old said the place where the team was taken “was not even a proper hotel”, but a cramped dormitory with six beds in one room for the women and only one filthy toilet.

“The ‘dharamshala’ that was given in the name of the guest house was very pathetic. In one room there were six double beds... There was only one toilet and the condition of the toilet was very bad,” he told PTI.

“It was such that I don’t think anyone could have taken a bath there,” said Verma.