Indian in Mali jail: MEA writes to employer for urgent hearing

The ministry is also learnt to have taken cognizance of Gulhane’s deteriorating health situation, as mentioned in the report. However, there was no immediate comment from the MEA on the latest development.

As per Gulhane’s family, officials in the MEA’s Central and West Africa division had a meeting with AEEPL Managing Director Rajendra Mishra in September last year, days after the bail was approved.

“Since that meeting, Mr Mishra has been postponing the deadline given by the ministry and giving excuses for not arranging the bail amount… The authorities should extend diplomatic and legal support to my husband,” Gulhane’s wife Priyanka told The Indian Express.

Exactly a year ago, Gulhane flew back to Mali’s capital Bamako to join work, after a couple of months off for his wife’s delivery and an angioplasty procedure. However, on February 25, four days after he landed in Bamako, Gulhane was arrested.

Priyanka, living at her parent’s house in Nagpur with their two children, said the arrest was the fallout of a financial dispute between AEEPL, where Gulhane is employed as a project manager, and the local Malian entity, Energie du Mali, for whom the firm is executing hydropower and electricity distribution projects.

As AEEPL’s project manager, Gulhane was overseeing the electrification of 22 villages in Djenne. Priyanka said her husband was neither involved, nor had the decision-making authority in the said financial matter. “His role was strictly limited to execution of the project in line with the specifications, timelines and budgets,” she said, adding that her husband suffers from diabetes and hypertension, with a history of angioplasty.

“His health has deteriorated severely in prison due to inadequate medical care. Continued detention poses a grave threat to his life,” she said, which the Ministry is learnt to have now taken note of in their latest communication to AEEPL MD Mishra.

Sources in the MEA had earlier said they were “in touch with the government of Mali and also with the company to do the needful”.

Mishra had earlier told The Indian Express that they “were waiting for official communication in this regard and a certified copy of the orders”. “Once we get that, we will decide in consultation with our lawyers. We are keeping the ministry apprised,” he said.

Divya A reports on travel, tourism, culture and social issues - not necessarily in that order - for The Indian Express. She's been a journalist for over a decade now, working with Khaleej Times and The Times of India, before settling down at Express. Besides writing/ editing news reports, she indulges her pen to write short stories. As Sanskriti Prabha Dutt Fellow for Excellence in Journalism, she is researching on the lives of the children of sex workers in India. ... Read More

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