A third Australian has died from Covid-19 in India while caring for his elderly parents.
Sunil Khanna, 51, an Australian citizen from Sydney’s west, died in hospital in New Delhi late last month, a few days after he tested positive for the virus.
First reported by the Sydney Morning Herald, his brother, Sanjay Khanna, confirmed to the Guardian that his brother and mother – an Indian national – had both died a few days after contracting the virus.
Khanna is now seeking urgent help from the Australian government to allow his 83-year-old father – also an Indian national – to travel to Australia on humanitarian grounds.
“That is my main aim,” he said on Wednesday night.
“He has recovered from Covid, he has his first vaccine shot and he will get his second, we will pay for the quarantine, but he is an elderly man and I hope to get him here.”
Khanna said his brother, who had lived in India for several years caring for his two parents, had been preparing to bring his parents to Australia later this year, and had obtained new passports for both of them before.
But, he said, the situation in India had turned to “chaos” and had thrown their plans into disarray.
“This Covid outbreak struck and everything was thrown into total chaos and turmoil,” he said.
Khanna is being assisted in his attempts to bring his father to Australia by Sanjay Deshwal, a Sydney migration agent and president of Little India Harris Park Business Association.
Deshwal said he had spoken to the federal minister for immigration, Alex Hawke, and the New South Wales minister for multiculturalism, Geoff Lee, about the case.
“We are asking the government to show some compassion, basically,” he said.
“Sanjay has been a citizen here for a long time and so had his younger brother Sunil. Both he and his mother both died within 24 hours, which is so sad, but thankfully his father has recovered and is Covid-negative now.”
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has been contacted for comment.
Khanna is the third Australian to die from Covid in India following the death of Sydney father of two Govind Kant, who died in a Delhi hospital on Sunday, after contracting Covid-19 at the end of April.
Kant became stuck in the country when he visited family following the death of his mother.
Earlier in May an Australian permanent resident died of Covid-19 while stranded in India, just days after the government’s strict ban on arrivals from the country began.
