Gurkha L/Cpl Gyanendra Rai - Banned From Britain

Yet another Gurkha hero, L/Cpl Gyanendra Rai, has been denied entry to Britain because he: "did not have strong ties to the UK". L/Cpl Rai was badly wounded during the Falklands War and discharged from the service on medical grounds. Members of the British Armed Forces receive a tax free medical pension if they have to leave the service on medical grounds. L/Cpl Rai served in the British Army but does not get a medical pension because he is a Gurkha. In fact he doesn't even receive a basic pension because he only served 13 years of the 15 required to qualify for the one sixth of a basic Army pension that Gurkhas receive.

This is only a small part of his story:

When I was required to leave my army service, my wife was pregnant and we were not allowed to stay at the Regimental Barracks in Hong Kong. I had to return to Nepal without any pension or income. We were so poor that we could not live in the town of Dharan, which was then the main British Gurkha recruitment camp for Nepal and a place to find work. My wife and I returned to my remote village, called Bhojpur. There was no hospital in that village, nor were there any medical facilities close to our village. Shortly after my army retirement, my wife gave a birth to our child at our home in the mountains. Unfortunately, during childbirth all the afterbirth did not come out. My wife became very sick, and I was forced to try and take her to a nearby airport to see if there would be someone to give her first aid or medical treatment. I carried my sick wife for 6 hours on foot, carrying her on basket on my back, to Tumlingar Airport. Sadly, my wife died on the way to the Airport. My heart was broken, but I could not give up, as I had to support my young children.

You can read L/Cpl Rai's full story HERE, Please do.

I personally believe that he has shown strong ties to the UK. What do you think?

There is a No10 E-Petition:

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to immediately and retrospectively give all Gurkha servicemen and their immediate families past and present British citizenship.

To sign the petition please click HERE