Father Uzhunnalil reaches India, meets PM
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New Delhi: Father Tom Uzhunnalil, a Vatican priest from Kerala who was freed from the clutches of the Islamic State terror group in Yemen earlier this month, returned to India on Thursday morning and met Prime Minister Narendra Modi here.
On reaching Delhi, Uzhunnalil paid gratitude to all those who made his freedom possible. "I am very happy, thank Almighty for making this day possible. I am grateful to all those people who have worked in their own way (to secure my release)," the priest told reporters at Delhi airport.
He later met Prime Minister Modi. External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar posted a picture of Modi handing over a bouquet to the priest.
Uzhunnallil was abducted by terrorists in March last year when militants barged into a care home for the elderly set up by Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity in Yemen's Aden and shot dead many people, including four nuns of the charity organisation, among whom one was from India.
He was rescued from captivity from an undisclosed location in Yemen thanks to the intervention of the Sultanate of Oman that helped to find and rescue him.