Ahmedabad: After France grounded a Dubai-Nicaragua flight carrying 303 Indians, including 96 Gujaratis, over suspected human smuggling last week, a group of 30 Gujaratis in Dubai had to cancel their plans to board the next charter jet to Nicaragua and flew back to India instead. Illegal immigration agents have allegedly been facilitating these chartered flights to help people cross into the US once they land in Nicaragua.

The group of 30 Gujaratis would possibly have been in Managua, the capital of Nicaragua, had the French authorities not detained the 303 passengers on the grounded flight for questioning.

Of those 303, 276 passengers returned to India on Tuesday. A local source privy to the development said, “The flight that was detained in France had taken off from Dubai on December 21. Another flight, scheduled to operate on December 22, was to carry 30 Gujarati passengers.”
After the French authorities grounded the December 21 flight, the next one was cancelled, and the 30 passengers were told to go back to India, the source said. They flew to different destinations in India and returned home over the past two to three days, the source said. On December 21, France had grounded the Nicaragua-bound flight with 303 passengers on board after a tip-off.
On December 24, a court set up at Vatry airport ordered the release of the passengers and allowed the flight to take off for Mumbai. Only 276 of them landed in Mumbai. Two passengers detained last week by French authorities for investigation were released by a French court on Monday.

A total of 25 passengers stayed back in France and sought asylum. Among them are unaccompanied minors including a 21-month-old child.
A police officer said that human smugglers began operating chartered flights so that passengers with the necessary documentation can first be taken to Nicaragua from where they could cross over into the US from the US-Mexico border.