They were received by Union minister Piyush Goyal and TN BJP president Nainar Nagenthran at Chennai airport. Photo by R Ramesh Shankar

CHENNAI: A total of 348 Indian citizens from different parts of Tamil Nadu and its neighbouring states, stranded in Iran for more than a month since a war broke out in West Asia, landed in Chennai in a special flight arranged from Armenia by the Indian embassy officials.Of the 348 passengers, 327 were Tamils, five were from Puducherry, while 10 were from Kerala. Most of the Tamils were natives of Tirunelveli, Kanyakumari and Nagapattinam districts and were working as fishermen in Iran. They were received by Union minister Piyush Goyal and TN BJP president Nainar Nagenthran and were sent to their respective towns in special buses.The returnees said they were unsure of their destiny till the very moment they landed in Tamil Nadu.Peter Blacian, 46, of Kanyakumari, said they hardly slept in the last month due to continuous explosions at closer proximity every single day. “It is very hard to explain how we felt. We had very little hope,” he said. Peter Blacian, along with 22 others as a team, was employees of Kish Island in Bandar Abbas and their primary job was to venture into the sea for fishing.Though the employers supported them with food after the onset of the war-like situation in Iran, they had to pay from their own pocket to leave their workplace for a dangerous 18-hour journey by bus to Qom city, where the Indian embassy officials received them.“From there, the embassy took care of us well with proper food and accommodation and further travel to Armenia via Julfar,” he said. Aneesh Raja, 34, another Kanyakumari native, said he had gone to Iran just three months ago and never expected that he would have to return home in such a crisis. “We went all the way to work as fishermen in Iran for better income, but now future looks bleak,” he said.