Video:Stranded Lankan in Venezuelan airport disappears

29 May 2012 07:21 am Views - 6208

A Sri Lankan man who lived in Caracas’s international airport in Venezuela for four months has mysteriously disappeared, news reports said.

Gizmodo.com reports that the man who is originally from Sri Lanka came to Venezuela without a visa. As there is no Sir Lanka embassy or consulate in Venezuela, they couldn’t start the process to return him to his original country.

The man, named Parameswaran, was instructed not to leave the building because he didn’t have any documents.

Parameswaran relied on the help from airport workers as he had no money of his own. He slept on the floor of the airport’s international terminal and washed in the public restrooms.

The Digital Journal reports that there was confusion about where exactly the man had arrived from, with Manuel Gago, a representative of Amnesty International in Venezuela, maintaining that the man arrived in Caracas from Mexico where he embarked by mistake on a flight to Venezuela.

This is not the first time a man has used an airport as his residence. Mehran Karimi Nasseri, the Iranian who lived in Charles de Gaulle’s Terminal One from August 1988 to July 2006 was made famous when his autobiography was used as the basis for the movie The Terminal, starring Tom Hanks.

Parameswaran’s story was well-known after his story was put on YouTube (in Spanish).

The authorities can’t say if he has returned to Sir Lanka or if he has stayed in the country.