Bangladeshis trapped in airport for weeks
In a case of life imitating art, reports have emerged of two Bangladeshi men who lived in an airport because they did not have passports - just like Tom Hanks in the film The Terminal.
The men were forced to lived in New Delhi airport for 48 days after being sent back to the Indian capital by Saudi Arabian authorities in March for arriving in the country without the necessary papers.
Saudi Arabia keeps passports of such visitors and sends them back with emergency travel certificates.
As Bangladesh forbids people without passports to enter the country the men, who had left their homes hoping for lucrative jobs in Saudi Arabia, were stuck in the transit lounge of Delhi's Indira Gandhi airport.
"They got so bored here that they would often request the eatery staff to give them some work not to earn money but to pass time," an airport official said.
Air India spent about $2,500 (£1,260) to feed them and pay for their visits to hospitals for medical check-ups under police escort before the Bangladesh mission issued new passports last week and ended their ordeal, it said.
In the 2004 Steven Spielberg film, Tom Hanks plays a traveller from a fictional East European country stuck in New York's JFK airport terminal after his passport is revoked following a coup back home.
© Independent Television News Limited 2007. All rights reserved.
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