07/28/2021 12:19
Clarín.com
Dresses
Updated 07/28/2021 12:19 PM
Indian Sajid Thungal, 70, who
was believed to have been killed in an air disaster
decades ago, was actually
hiding
from his family
for 45 years
because he was considered a failure, reports the
LadBible
portal
.
Sajid left his home in Kottayam, India, in 1974 to work organizing events for Indian singers and dancers in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, reports
RT
.
In the Indian Airlines plane crash, all 95 passengers were presumed dead.
Two years later, when he was flying into the city with a group of artists to Madras, his Indian Airlines flight, with
95 people on board
, crashed after one of its engines caught fire.
All passengers and crew were left for dead.
However, Thungal survived but did not contact his family because
he felt guilty
about being a failure in life.
He was in hiding for 45 years
In 1982 he moved to Bombay, where he has lived ever since.
"I thought that first I had to make a fortune. When I did not succeed in the Persian Gulf, I decided that I would try my luck in Bombay, and then I would contact everyone. But here it did not work either. And
so 45 years passed
," he said.
Two years ago I was in a terrible state and was taken to a shelter for the
homeless
.
The pastor who runs the establishment started looking for his relatives and sent a request to a mosque in Kottayam to check if his family still lived in the city,
RT
reports
.
Sajid (center) with the pastor (right) who runs the shelter (Pastor Philip).
The family was surprised that the man was alive.
Sajid's father had long died, but
his mother was still alive, now 91 years old.
The man has already contacted his relatives through a video call, but, overwhelmed with emotion, he could barely speak.
"I want to go home. If the people here hadn't taken care of me, I would have died without reuniting with my family," he confessed.
His brother, Mohammed Kunju, will arrive in Bombay on Wednesday 28 to look for him and take him home.
According to Kunju, the family never forgot Sajid and even went to Abu Dhabi to look for him.
"Now that he is finally coming home,
we are not going to lose sight of him
," he said.
GML