Shortly after midnight, in the early hours of September 11, famous Australian filmmaker David Bradbury had arrived in India to travel the country for a few weeks with his children Nakeita, aged 21, and Omar, 14. On reaching the Chennai airport at 1 am, however, David, a two-time Oscar award nominee, was stopped by the immigration officials, while Nakeita and Omar were allowed to pass through. He was then taken to a room in the airport, where he was allegedly held in detention for 24 hours before being forced to fly back to Thailand, where the trio had come from.
David had to part with his children and hope that they’d be able to travel across India on their own, including a trip to Varanasi to give a ‘Hindu farewell’ to his deceased partner Treena Lenthall, who was Omar’s mother. David never got an explanation on why he was not allowed to enter the country. However, he believes that it may have to do with his documentary, covering the protests of the people of Tamil Nadu against the Kudankulam nuclear plant in 2012.
“We had spent two weeks in Bangkok before coming to India. There was a delay in processing dad’s visa, but it had come through in the end, and we were excited to travel to India. It is my first time here, and we thought dad would be with us to show us around. He had come before in 2012, with Omar, who was then only three years old,” Nakeita told TNM when we met her and Omar on September 18, the day they came to Thiruvananthapuram.
On September 26, they left India after completing the itinerary as they had planned. They have been in touch with David Bradbury, who will meet them in Milan in the next leg of their tour. “We had stood just a few metres across from him when we were allowed into India, and he was not,” Naiketa recalled.
“The officials at the airport asked us to convince my father to go back to Thailand,” Omar said. In the end, David had to return to Thailand and spend a lot of money for the ticket, or else, he was told by Thai Airways, he’d be deported back to Australia.
David shared his experience at the airport in an email interview with TNM. “After they pulled me aside at Chennai airport with my kids within eyesight of me, just 10 metres away, they took me to a side room in the airport, which had a single bed, mattress, no sheets, or blanket. Rubbish on the floor and a metal grill on the door, which had a view out to a wall beyond. I was allowed to go to the toilet up the corridor, but there was one time when, despite my calling out, they didn't come back to let me out. So I was obliged to relieve my bladder into a paper cup I found on the floor,” he wrote.
He asked if he could contact the Australian embassy in Delhi several times during this detention. “They ignored this request,” he said. He was asked by the interrogators to unlock his phone, but he refused.
Anti-nuclear protests of 2012
David got an inkling of what was going on when two men in plainclothes interviewed him and asked questions about his involvement in the anti-nuclear protests in Idinthakarai of Tamil Nadu back in 2012. He had filmed the protests of the people in the village against the Kudankulam nuclear plant.
“I told them that I was just doing my job, like they are now interrogating me. It was important for me to see the people of Idinthakarai learn why they were so determined in their struggle against the Union government in Delhi and the state government in Chennai that six nuclear power plants were being built. I told the interrogating officers that if India was truly a democracy, it should value the rights of the media to have access to marginalised people and tell their side of the story. I told the two officers that I agreed with the people of Idinthakarai that it was 'madness' to build one, let alone six nuclear reactors on a major earthquake fault line that had swept one thousand locals to their deaths in the tsunami of 2004,” David said.
He told the officers that he had no intention to go to Idinthakarai this time, with or without his kids. Their plan was to travel to Puducherry, where they had booked into an ashram for three nights, to hop to Thrissur, where he had earlier come with Treena to attend a film festival called ViBGYOR, and to go to Thiruvananthapuram before flying to Varanasi. They wanted to pay homage to Treena at Varanasi.
“I was really hoping my father would be here. I understand the ways are different here for men and women, and though my brother is younger, I am relying on him for a safe trip here,” Nakeita said.
“Once back in Bangkok, we had daily phone calls and numerous text messages to guide them. I am very proud of them and how they have handled this situation and grown through it,” David said.
David made it clear that he is still against the nuclear plant at Kudankulam. "I think the Tamil Nadu and Delhi national governments, when they made this decision to build six nuclear reactors on a major earthquake fault line, acted not only irresponsibly towards their own people but also to the world—to the people of Sri Lanka and other surrounding countries, home to many millions of people. If one of those reactors has a meltdown like Fukushima or Chernobyl or Three Mile Island in the US, the consequences and triggering of cancer in potentially not only millions of humans but other species from the radiation leakage will be catastrophic."