A Malindo Air special flight on Saturday evacuated 179 people, mostly Malaysian citizens, from India and Sri Lanka amid coronavirus curbs on travel.

The plane carried 97 passengers, including an infant and a few permanent residents of Malaysia, from Chennai in the afternoon and flew to Colombo to pick up 82 Malaysians from there, a person familiar with the rescue flight said.

The evacuation of stranded Malaysians was one of the issues Foreign Minister Hishammuddin Hussein discussed recently with his Indian counterpart S Jaishankar and Sri Lanka’s Dinesh Gunawardena.

Before the latest evacuation flight, 18 special flights had brought back 2,876 stranded Malaysians from India. - Bernama