run airlines, offloaded an unconscious passenger even after he was issued a boarding pass and completed all his immigration procedures. Mohammed Shaffe, 39, from Thanoor in Malappuram district of Kerala, India, has spent the last one and one half months in King Fahd Military Hospital, after being involved in an accident in the Abqaiq area. All attempts to contact Air India officials for their version of the episode failed. According to Abdullah Ali, organizer of the India Fraternity Forum, Air India offloaded the passenger “due to lack of facility to carry a sick passenger”. The welfare wing members of the forum, Ali said, made all the arrangements including the paperwork, and got Air India's approval to carry Shaffe and received a seat confirmation for him along with a nurse and an assistant. “We received all the confirmation from Air India to send Shaffe home for medical treatment. We completed all the paper work, and provided a nurse and an assistant as per the directions of the airline,” he said. “Air India gave us seat confirmation on Wednesday's flight AI 918. We brought Shaffe from hospital in an ambulance. But the inflight doctor did not allow Shaffe to travel since he was unconscious and there were no facilities inside the plane. “This is very cruel for the patient and his relatives who were waiting at the airport back home with an ambulance,” Ali said. Ali said the accompanying nurse and travel assistant had to travel to India without Shaffe since their immigration formalities had been completed. “Air India should have informed us about their inability to airlift the injured passenger so that we would not have gone through the trouble of taking a patient in critical condition to the airport. He was denied travel after permitting him to enter the plane and this is in violation of his human rights,” said another social worker who was involved in the matter. Social workers in Dammam are planning to file a complaint against Air India with the Saudi Human Rights Commission, Indian and Saudi aviation ministries, Indian Foreign Minister and Indian Minister for Expatriates' Affairs. Shaffe, who came to the Kingdom seven months ago as a house driver, is the sole support of his wife and three children. Social workers fear that the completion of immigration procedures and the exit visa stamped in Shaffe's passport will further complicate his ability to travel.
