<p><strong>Psychiatric patient</strong></p> <p>Among the tens of thousands of residents and visitors who benefitted from the four-month-long UAE visa amnesty programme that ended last week are several bedridden patients like Ilyas who had been languishing in the UAE hospitals without legal documents.</p> <p>Several such patients got repatriated without any fines and immigration ban during the amnesty, thanks to the services of the community volunteers like Praveen, who has been supporting the repatriation and airlifting of bedridden and critically ill patients.</p> <p>Another significant amnesty case that Praveen supported was that of K. Ahmed, who had been living illegally for one-and-a-half year. &ldquo;He had become depressed and started having hallucinations and nightmares. Apparently, once he saw his house catching fire and he tried to end his life by hanging himself on a tree. He was then admitted to a psychiatric hospital. The doctors and nurses did an excellent job and he became completely cured in just one-and-a-half-month. He was then issued a mentally fit certificate following which we could help with his repatriation,&rdquo; explained Praveen.</p> <p>Among the nearly a dozen cases of patients who were supported by Praveen during the amnesty include that of another stroke patient, Sukhmander Singh from Uttar Pradesh, who was bedridden for three months and Gunakara from Karnataka, who was hospitalised for over a month.</p> <p>&ldquo;What is heartening is that all of them went home without paying their hospital bills and immigration fines. All the paper works at the consulate and General Directorate of Residency and Foreign Affairs (GDRFA) were done free of cost and their tickets were sponsored by benevolent community members and groups,&rdquo; explained Praveen.</p> <p>&ldquo;I am glad for the opportunities that I received to help them with paper works and escort some of them on their flights if they were over the weekend. All thanks to the UAE authorities and the Indian Consulate, they all have safely reached their homeland,&rdquo; he added.</p>