For three daughters growing up in Odisha, their mother had been a distant voice on the phone , and then, even that had gone silent.
Hasta Mahananda, a single mother from Odisha, had been living and working in the UAE since 2022. Three years passed without a visit home. Then contact broke down entirely. Worried relatives turned to the authorities, eventually triggering court proceedings before the Odisha High Court, and a formal request to find out where she was and whether she was safe.
That request landed with the Consulate General of India in Dubai, and what followed was a quiet, methodical mission to bring Hasta Mahananda home. Consular officials began with only a mobile number. It rang unanswered. Multiple attempts failed. Around the same time, Hasta Mahananda had posted a video on Facebook appealing for help , a cry that did not go unnoticed. The Mission in Dubai took cognisance of the post, adding further urgency to efforts already underway to locate her.
Undeterred, the team approached the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs, seeking to trace her through official channels. When those replies were still awaited, officials dug further , locating her passport number, pulling her visa records, and working backwards through her sponsor details to identify her local sponsor, who connected them to a company manager.On 12 May 2026, the company manager walked into the Consulate General’s office in Dubai , with Hasta Mahananda beside him.
She told officials she was safe and had not faced harassment. She had not been home in nearly five years, and every request she had made to her employer to travel had been turned down. With the regional conflict in West Asia having eroded her finances, she had found herself effectively stranded ,unable to leave, and increasingly unable to cope.Consular officials moved quickly. In discussions with the company, they directed the employer to clear all pending salary and end-of-service dues, settle overstay fines, and arrange a return air ticket. The company cancelled her contract and confirmed it would meet all obligations.
But the story did not end there. When Hasta Mahananda returned to the Consulate days later, she had nothing , no savings, no bank account, no means to cover even the remaining formalities of going home. The Consulate arranged shelter and used Indian Community Welfare Fund resources to book her ticket. She has travelled back to India and will soon be reunited with her daughters.
Her case traced through a chain of records, phone calls, and quiet official persistence, is a reminder of what Indian missions abroad do, largely out of public view, for nationals who have no one else to turn to.
