There was much rejoicing in Vadakkankulam near Tirunelveli town of south Tamil Nadu as news of the release of three of its men, who had been held hostage by Nigerian militants, trickled in on Tuesday.“We were informed at about 9 am that all three men, Ajit Kamaraj, K Mohandoss and P Vinod, had been released. The oil company for which they worked apparently paid a ransom of Rs 125 crore in Indian currency for their release,” Nellai District Collector, G Prakash, told The Indian Express.The three men, along with a Maharashtrian, 48-year-old Pandurang Tari, and two others from Poland, had been kidnapped from an oil facility off Port Harcourt in Nigeria in the early hours of October 26. The militants had demanded US$50 million as ransom for the release of the hostages, who were kidnapped while they were on the Floating Production Storage & Offloading (FPSO) facility owned by an Italian-based company, Saipem.“We are all very happy,” said Subitha, wife of Ajit, who along with her two-year-old son Abhijit, waited anxiously for news at her parents’ house in Marthandam in Kanyakumari. “Ajit called me this morning and said he would be returning home soon. He said the militants looked after them well and gave them good food and did not harm them in any way,” said an elated Subitha.Collector Prakash said all three Tamils would be boarding a flight from Lagos in Nigeria on Wednesday night and were likely to reach Dubai, from where they would take a flight to Thiruvananthapuram on Thursday night. They will then proceed to their village. Panduran Tari, who hails from Thane, will take a flight to Mumbai from Dubai. “They told us they were treated like guests” said Jaipal Sudarshan, Ajit’s brother, who was also working on the same oil facility and is home on leave.Sudarshan said the oil company had informed all the 14 Indians working on the facility, including himself, that they would be given three months paid leave and later relocated to facilities in other parts of the world. Among the 14, seven hail from Vadakkankulam village, four from Maharashtra, one from Chennai, one from Andamans & Nicobar Islands and one from Mangalore.
