Prema Thongdok is in her 30s and has lived in the United Kingdom for 14 years.
Prema Thongdok, a UK-based Indian woman originally from Arunachal Pradesh, has said she was held for 18 hours during a transit at Shanghai Pudong Airport after officials claimed her Indian passport was “invalid” because it listed Arunachal Pradesh as her birthplace.
Prema Thongdok is in her 30s and has lived in the United Kingdom for 14 years. She is originally from Rupa in West Kameng district of Arunachal Pradesh, where her family still lives. She works as a financial adviser in the UK and was travelling from London to Japan on 21 November, with a planned three-hour transit in Shanghai.
She said she had previously passed through the same airport without any issues. “On October 16, I had very successfully transited through the same airport. There was no issue,” she told The Indian Express.
WHAT HAPPENED AT SHANGHAI AIRPORT?
Thongdok said she was singled out at the security check and taken aside. Officials pointed to the birthplace entry in her passport and told her that Arunachal Pradesh “is a part of China”, and therefore her Indian passport was “not valid”.
“They were insisting that my passport is not valid,” she said. “One of them even said that I should get a Chinese passport, because I am Chinese. They were mocking me.”
She said officials kept her passport, blocked her from boarding her flight to Japan despite a valid visa, and made her wait 18 hours without food or access to reliable information. “They insisted that I either fly back to the UK or fly to India,” she said.
Thongdok said she eventually managed to contact the Indian Consulate in Shanghai. “Six officials arrived within an hour and brought me food,” she said. They tried to persuade authorities to allow her onward travel to Japan, but the request was refused.
She said she was told she could only fly out using China Eastern Airlines. She later booked a flight to India with a transit in Thailand and is now staying in Thailand while working remotely.
Thongdok emailed the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), calling the declaration of her passport as “invalid” a “direct challenge to India’s sovereignty”. She described the incident as “harassment” and said a “geopolitical matter was misdirected at a private Indian citizen”.
She has asked the Indian government to take up the matter “strongly” with China and seek compensation for “harassment, distress and financial losses”.
Officials also pointed out that the Chinese authorities’ actions go against international civil aviation rules under the Chicago and Montreal Conventions.
