Bench averts grounding of high-flying career

Madurai: Sharanya’s is a strange tale of suffering coupled with determination. In June 2002, her father Santaan Naidu married her off to K Venkatesan, her maternal uncle, who was then double her age, at Melur in Madurai. As Venkatesan was employed in Singapore, she stayed with her parents in Mumbai and pursued her studies and landed a cabin attendant’s job in Qatar Airways, Doha.
“I was concentrating more on my work and was happy with how things were going, but the happiness did not last for long,” said Sharanya recalling how a phone call from her mother in June this year cut short her happiness. Her mother informed Sharanya that her maternal grandparents were ill. Believing this, she obtained ‘medical leave’ from her employers in Doha on June 24 and went to Melur only to find her grandparents healthy. Life turned for the worse as her husband and parents confiscated her passport, confined her and tormented her to quit her job.
As she did not report for duty after the scheduled ‘medical leave’ period, the Qatar Airways terminated her. After a series of painful events, her parents and husband allowed her to return to Doha to collect ‘important documents’ from the airline company.
On reaching Doha on July 25, she explained her situation to the higher management of Qatar Airways who reinstated her on August 22 after issuing a warning.
In the meantime, Venkatesan moved the High Court seeking direction to the Union Ministry of External Affairs, Indian High Commission in Qatar, Qatar Airways and others to trace his ‘missing wife’ and send her back to India.
Sharanya, however, wrote to the court Registrar through the Indian Embassy, pleading to dismiss the petition since “the only sole objective of my husband is to bring me back in India to face his absolute brutalities.” Considering that Sharanya was now a major, Justice Ramasubramaniam dismissed the petition.
12/11/11 New Indian Express/IBN Live

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Categories: Foreign Nov 2011