Iranian charity worker back home after ordeal in India

EghtesdaOnline: Narges Kalbasi Ashtari, a young Iranian charity worker, who was caught in a criminal case in India since 2014, is now back home after being exonerated by an Indian appeals court last month.

News ID: ۷۷۵۴۵۲

15 April 2017

Narges, 28, arrived in Iran’s central city of Isfahan yesterday where he was warmly welcomed by his family and friends at the city’s international airport, IRNA reported.

The Iranian benefactor had been convicted of “involuntary manslaughter” in 2014, when a five-year-old boy disappeared during a riverside picnic organized by her in India’s eastern Odisha State. The boy was later found dead. He had accidentally fallen into the river and died. Her parents were accompanying him.

Ashtari, the head of the Prishan charity foundation, was sentenced to a year in jail for “manslaughter” on December 5, 2016, a charge she denied.

Later in December, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif vowed that Tehran would use all its capacity to secure her release.

After a lengthy court battle, she was finally cleared of the charge by an Indian appeals court on March 25.

The founder of Prishan orphanage home in the Rayagada district in Odisha, Ashtari, an orphan from both parents herself, has been a mother-like to numerous underprivileged children in India.