Muscat: An Omani tourist was stabbed in a Thai town and an elderly Omani was held at an Indian airport for carrying rifle bullets with him while boarding a flight.
A 32-year-old Omani tourist was stabbed in the stomach last Wednesday after an altercation with a bar worker at Walking Street in Pattaya, a popular beach resort in Thailand, according to Thai news portal Pattaya One.
According to the news portal, the victim and the attacker were seen animatedly arguing before the Thai bar worker picked up a knife and stabbed the bigger built Omani tourist in the stomach. He then fled from the spot.
However, the Thai police have identified the attacker from CCTV footage in the area and have issued an arrest warrant against him.
The Omani tourist is now recovering from his injuries in a hospital in Bangkok as police have intensified the hunt for the suspect.
On the same day, the airport police in India’s southern state of Chennai detained a 73-year-old Omani for trying to carry a 7.62mm rifle bullet inside his shaving kit while boarding an Air India flight to Muscat. He was returning after treatment at a private hospital in Chennai.
The Omani, identified as Al Zaid Ali by Chennai airport police, claimed that his son was employed with a police department in Oman.
According to the police version, reported by Indian daily Times of India, Al Zaid Ali had come to the airport to board the flight to Muscat and while undergoing security checks the scan machine beeped. The personnel checked his hand baggage and found the bullet.
The Indian national daily reported that the police doubt that the Omani had any bad intentions in carrying the bullet with him. However, the Indian police are carrying out thorough investigations and also verifying with the Indian mission in Muscat whether the detained Omani’s claims were genuine.
The paper added that the Indian police were surprised that the Omani could enter the country without the bullet being detected at the airport. “We don’t know if it was the failure of scanning devices or if he had got the bullet here in India,” an officer told the English paper.
The language barrier also made the task of police tough at the Chennai airport as the detained Omani only spoke in Arabic. However, an interpreter was summoned to interrogate the Omani detainee.
