Deepak Raheja and Shyamsundar Agarwal, languishing Indian businessmen in China, threatened to commit suicide if they were not brought to India safely within a week. Alleging that Indian officials were not helping them in China, both of them went on a hunger strike in Shanghai on Wednesday.
They sent a detailed mail to the ministry of external affairs, Government of India, and copied it to the media, explaining their hardship and at the end of the mail they threatened that the will commit suicide if the government fails to bring them back to India within a week. As the Indian embassy had stopped providing them with financial aid two weeks ago, and due to non- payment of the hotel’s outstanding bills, they were evicted from the hotel on Tuesday, they had to sleep on the footpath in Shanghai.
Mr Raheja said S.M. Krishna, the Union external affairs minister had promised all kinds of help when they met him in Shanghai on February 7, but surprisingly, the emb-assy officials even stopped them financial aid. “Due to non-payment of the hotel bills, we were thrown out of the hotel on Tuesday night and we had to spend the whole night on the street. We are left with no money and we had no option but to resort to the hunger strike,” said Mr Raheja.
“The embassy officials are not responding to our mail and we will commit suicide if the government will not take us from China within a week,” Raheja threatened. The two Indian businessmen, claiming to be employees of a trading firm in the Yiwu city of China, were rescued from the illegal custody of the local traders with the help of Indian officials on January 4 and were brought to Shanghai. They were taken into custody last December by the Chinese traders after the owner of the firm fled without paying dues.