Maldives oppn slams Prez Muizzu as teen reportedly dies after being denied Indian chopper for medical services

The boy's family was quoted by the media in the neighbouring country alleging that the delay in airlifting him to the national capital had led to his death.

New Delhi: After a teenage boy from Villingili, a remote island in the Maldives, died allegedly due to a delay in airlifting him to a hospital, his family and the opposition parties in the archipelago criticized President Mohamed Muizzu’s government for restricting the use of the aircraft and choppers provided by India.

Muizzu has now asked the Maldivian, the national carrier of the Indian Ocean nation, to prioritize medical evacuation. He also ordered a review of the process for medical evacuation.

The new regime in Malé has of late set March 15 as the deadline for India to withdraw its military personnel from the Maldives. Most of the military personnel New Delhi deployed in the Maldives are engaged in operating one aircraft and two helicopters provided by India to the neighbouring Indian Ocean nation for humanitarian services, including medical evacuation from the far-flung islands.

The family of the 13-year-old Mohamed Jaah Khalid, who had a brain tumour, had requested the authorities to make necessary arrangements for airlifting him from Villingili to Malé so that he could get advanced medical treatment at the Indira Gandhi Memorial Hospital in the capital of the island nation. The Aasandha, the national medical insurance company, received the emergency evacuation request early on January 18 and arranged for a sea ambulance to bring him from Villingili to the nearest airport on the island of Kooddoo.

Aasandha later stated that it had planned to divert a scheduled flight of Maldivian from Malé to Kadhdhoo to pick up Khalid from Kooddoo. The plan, however, could not be implemented due to a technical glitch in the aircraft. The insurance company then arranged a chartered flight which brought him to Malé in the evening on January 18.

The boy, however, passed away at the Indira Gandhi Memorial Hospital in Malé on Saturday. His family was quoted by the media in the neighbouring country alleging that the delay in airlifting him to the national capital had led to his death.

“Is the Muizzu Govt’s refusal to use all available facilities including the Indian aircraft to save Maldivian lives justifiable?” Mariya Didi, the country’s former defence minister and a leader of the opposition Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP), posted on X.

Apart from the delay in airlifting Khalid from Villingili, the MDP leader also referred to the Muizzu Government’s refusal to use India’s plane and choppers available in the Maldives in a search operation the Maldivian National Defence Force launched after Naeesh, a 12th-grade student at a school in Addu City, went missing while catching lobsters in the ocean last month.

The new regime in Malé has set March 15 as the deadline for India to withdraw its military personnel from the Maldives. The two sides are now discussing “mutually workable solutions” for continuing the operations of the aviation platforms provided by India to the Maldives for providing humanitarian and medical evacuation services to the people of the island nation.

Though the Muizzu Government had initially stated that India had 77 military personnel in the Maldives, it recently updated the count to 88. It had suggested that New Delhi, after the withdrawal of the military personnel, could engage civilians to operate the plane and the two helicopters India provided to the Maldives.

“The President directed Island Aviation Services Limited to establish a protocol prioritising timely patient transportation for critical patients without requiring the completion of the approval process by administrative bodies, such as Aasandha,” Muizzu’s office stated in Malé.

Muizzu’s campaign for the presidential polls in September 2023 saw him opposing and promising to reverse his predecessor Ibrahim Mohamed Solih’s ‘India First’ policy of treating India as a preferred partner for the Maldives and lessening its reliance on China. He kept his poll promise and formally asked India to withdraw all its military personnel from the Maldives immediately after taking oath on November 17. However, during his meeting with India’s union minister Kiren Rijiju a day after being sworn in, the new president of the Maldives, however, acknowledged the role of India’s military personnel and the aviation platforms in humanitarian services and emergency evacuation of people from the remote islands of the Maldives.

Rijiju represented the Government of India at the swearing-in ceremony of Muizzu.