Coronavirus: Sonu Sood has joined hands with SpiceJet to evacuate 1,500 Indian students from Kyrgyzstan.
After helping hundreds of migrant labourers return home at the height of the countrywide coronavirus lockdown, Actor Sonu Sood has joined hands with SpiceJet to evacuate 1,500 Indian students from Kyrgyzstan.
The information was shared by SpiceJet's on Twitter, where the airline said it would be operating nine such flights, first of which took off from Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport today.
"It is a historic day! SpiceJet, in association with the real life hero Sonu Sood, is embarking on a once-in-a-lifetime evacuation operation to reunite 1500 Indian students stranded in Kyrgyzstan, with their families. The first of 9 special flights has taken off from Delhi!" tweeted SpiceJet, the first Indian budget carrier to be allowed to operate services to the United States. Only the national carrier Air India was operating flights on India-US routes till now.
Earlier, besides hiring buses to send migrant labourers to their home states amid the coronavirus lockdown, actor Sonu Sood had also mobilised resources to charter flights to Assam and Dehradun sending more than 300 men, women and children home.
The coronavirus crisis had left thousands of migrant workers unemployed, homeless and hungry and pushed lakhs to start walking home as the government imposed unprecedented travel restrictions across the country to contain the spread of the coronavirus.
The government had suspended all road, rail and air travel services, including international flights, ahead of the lockdown that started March 25.
While state governments used buses to bring the stranded to their home states, the Indian Railways started Shramik Special trains on May 1. The government also started Vande Bharat Mission to evacuate Indians stuck abroad amid the pandemic. According to the government, more than 6,50,000 Indians stranded abroad due to coronavirus pandemic were evacuated till July 14.