Flight chaos and 'pathetic' dharamshala: Medal-winning Indian archers' ordeal in Dhaka

Indian archers endured a night of chaos when their return to the country from Dhaka after the Asian Championships was delayed by a day due to a cancelled flight, forcing them to stay at a "substandard shelter" after navigating through the violence-hit Bangladeshi capital without security.

Eleven members of the 23-strong squad, including two minors, were left stranded for nearly 10 hours at the airport amid repeated flight delays and a "complete absence of support" from the airline on which they were booked.

The group, which included senior pros Abhishek Verma, Jyoti Surekha and Olympian Dhiraj Bommadevara, had reached the Dhaka airport on Saturday for their 9.30 pm flight to Delhi, only to be told after boarding that the aircraft had developed a technical snag and would not take off.

It was at a time when Dhaka witnessed violence on the streets as it awaited a special tribunal's verdict against deposed Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in a case of alleged crimes against humanity.

The archers, seven of them women, remained inside the terminal till 2 am with no clarity. When the cancellation was finally announced, passengers were informed that no alternate flight would be arranged that night.

The moment the team stepped out of the airport, their ordeal escalated.

They were herded into a "window-less local bus" and taken nearly half an hour away to a makeshift lodge which was like a "Dharamshala", the country's most decorated compound male archer Verma alleged.

The 36-year-old said the place where the team was taken "was not even a proper hotel", but a cramped dormitory with six beds in one room for the women and only one filthy toilet.

"The 'dharamshala' that was given in the name of the guest house was very pathetic. In one room there were six double beds... There was only one toilet and the condition of the toilet was very bad," he told PTI.

"It was such that I don't think anyone could have taken a bath there," Verma, who has consecutive Asian Games silver medals (2018 and 2022), alleged.

Their attempts to make alternative arrangements also could not work out as they could not do any international transaction.

"Personally, we could not manage anything as no international cards were accepted there. We couldn't do get Uber because there was some error coming in payment method... And we were not confirmed about the flight," Verma said.

"Even if we knew we would get it by 11 am in the morning, we would have stayed back at the airport. Because they (the airline) did not confirm anything."

The contingent headed back to the airport at 7 am the next day, only to be caught in further delays after reaching Delhi.

Several archers missed their onward connections — to Hyderabad and Vijayawada — forcing costly re-bookings and long road journeys.

"Now all the flights were cancelled and the Federation had to bear the cost," Verma said.

"One ticket, Mumbai to Delhi, I think the costing of each ticket is more than Rs 20,000. So if our Federation had to bear lakhs of rupees, whose responsibility is it?" he said.

Verma did not mince words in holding the airline accountable for not supporting the national squad in a difficult situation.

"Your plane broke down, and while you know that riots are happening outside... How did they put us in local transport? If something had happened in that bus, there were three teenage girls. Who would have been responsible?"    "There were seven female members of which four under 20. No, there was no compensation. It's not that they didn't know," Verma alleged.

The nightmarish journey overshadowed India's best-ever show at the Asian Championships where they topped the medals table with 10 podium finishes — including six gold, three silver and one bronze.

They finished ahead of heavyweight South Korea who also ended with 10 medals but had less gold in their tally.

India had a 23-member contingent in Dhaka and it travelled in three groups — to Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata.

The Kolkata group, which had seven members including Atanu Das, Deepika Kumari and coaches Poornima Mahato and Rahul Banerjee, had no such issue, while the Mumbai batch which had Maharashtra archers like Prathamesh Fuge and Sahil Jadhav also reached on time.