Chhattisgarh prisons department employee Kasim Raza (60) last spoke to his daughter, who lives with her husband and children in Iran, on Wednesday. She told him she was scared and wanted to come back to India amid the escalating Israel-Iran conflict. Since that call, there has been no communication from her. Raza’s 29-year-old daughter, Eman, lives in the Iranian city of Qom. Her husband, Madhya Pradesh native Ejaz Zaidi (34), is pursuing maulviyat (traditional Islamic education) in Iran. They have two sons aged five and three. Qom is the city where several Indian students from the Iranian capital of Tehran, which has faced multiple strikes from Israel, have been moved to. While this gave the Raza family some hope that the city is relatively calm, the fact that there has been no communication from their daughter since Wednesday has left them worried. “The last phone call we got from Eman was on Wednesday, when she said she was scared, that she wanted to come back to India, and that things were not going well in Iran. She and her mother were crying on the phone. I will soon submit a letter to the Indian government through the state government requesting them to make arrangements to get my daughter and her family back home,” Raza told The Indian Express from their home in Raipur. Raza last saw his daughter in 2023, when she had come to India for 45 days and stayed with her parents for a couple of weeks. Raza’s wife, Shaheen, said, “Our son-in-law was to come to India on June 13 for Muharram, but his flight got cancelled due to the ongoing conflict. We saw news that internet has been suspended (in Iran) for safety. We are unable to contact them, so we believe the internet is not working there. This is the first time we are facing such an issue. I got very scared when my grandson told me, yaha pe war chal rahi hai (a war is going on here). They do not understand what a war is!”
