MP seeks Modi's help for release of engineers stranded in Iran

Rajya Sabha MP Parimal Nathwani has written a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking his intervention to secure the release of two engineers of a Goa-based company stranded in Iran since December last year.
"In my letter I have brought to the notice of the Prime Minister as to how service engineers Sanket D Pandya (from Vadodara in Gujarat) and Mohammed Husain Khan (from Haryana) were sent to Iran by their Goa-based employer Powers Engineers India Ltd (PIEL) for commissioning of a power project there," Nathwani told PTI late last night before going to New Delhi to attend the ongoing Parliament session.

He has also mentioned that in January this year, both of them were shifted to a hotel in Tehran after their 'release' from a guest house in Zanjan, where they were allegedly 'confined'.
Nathwani, in his letter, has also brought to the PM's notice the efforts earlier made by India's ambassador to Iran to secure the engineers' release.
The families of the two engineers have also been requesting for their early repatriation on humanitarian grounds, but have failed to secure their release till now.
Pandya (36) and Khan were illegally 'confined' in Iran last year following the seizure of their passports, when PIEL allegedly got embroiled in a dispute with a company there.

Earlier, PIEL chairman Atul Pai Kane had in a letter addressed to Union External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar urged them to take up the matter with their counterpart in the Iranian government.

He requested for speedy return of the two employees suffering due to a completely false and unjust case initiated by Iranian company- M/s Vazhar Jahan - without seeking recourse to arbitration, as per a provision in the agreement (between the two companies).
The letter further alleged that Vazhar Jahan company had initiated false and frivolous legal proceedings against the duo for offences of robbery and malversation and disrupting the system of the power station.

"The company's demand of an exorbitant compensation (arising out of the dispute) without exercising their statutory remedy of arbitration as provided in the agreement is also unjust and illegal," it said.
Earlier, the matter was also discussed by former External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid with his Iranian counterpart Dr Mohammad Javad Zarif in February 2014.
Sanket's mother Ilaben Pandya had also written in this regard to the Prime Minister in June this year.