“This is to inform to all the students of Kyrgyzstan that it’s time to come home,” Sonu Sood wrote on Twitter on July 21, 2020. The Bollywood actor, who had already made a name for himself during India’s coronavirus lockdown, was telling Indian students stuck in Bishkek that he had booked planes for them.
Mumbai Mirror reported that the first charter would run from Bishkek to Varanasi, with flight details going out to each student by email and mobile phone. Charters for other states, Sood added, would fly the same week. Eight days earlier, on July 13, he had promised the students they would be home soon. The tweet was him making good on it.
Fifteen hundred students, four months abroad
Times of India’s entertainment arm, etimes, put numbers on the effort in a report dated July 26, 2020. More than 1,500 Indian students had been stranded in Kyrgyzstan for about four months because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The first flight left on July 23 with 135 students aboard, bound for Varanasi, according to etimes. Nine charters in all were planned. The two outlets differ by a day on the first departure: Mumbai Mirror quoted Sood’s announcement of July 22, etimes recorded takeoff on July 23.
The operation had a hashtag, #MissionKyrgyzstan, and a soundtrack of gratitude. Etimes said a batch of students on one flight recorded a video from inside the aircraft, holding up pictures of Sood and cheering.
Praise online, and a warning
Social media responded fast. Some users compared Sood with Sushma Swaraj, the former External Affairs Minister. Others noted that audiences knew him as a screen villain, yet he had turned out to be a hero in real life, Mumbai Mirror wrote.
Sood also asked people seeking his help not to pay anyone for it. His team, he said, was not charging or collecting a single penny.
The students were not his only cause that month. Mumbai Mirror noted he had donated 25,000 face shields to police in Maharashtra on July 16, and that he had earlier pledged financial help to more than 400 families of migrant workers who were injured or died during the pandemic and lockdown.
Sources
- Sonu Sood arranges charter flights for Indian students stranded in Kyrgyzstan, turns saviour yet again!
- Sonu Sood arranges charter flights for over 1,500 Indian students stranded in Kyrgyzstan, group of airborne students send actor message of gratitude
