Two weeks before the eight Indian Navy veterans were released by Qatar on the intervening night of 11-12 February, Indian Standard Time, a positive response by the Qatari officials was communicated to the Indian side that the men would be released. Highly placed sources aware of the development told The Sunday Guardian that in the background of the excellent relations between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the Qatari side had communicated to their Indian counterparts that they would like PM Modi to visit Qatar since he was already scheduled to visit the region as part of his preplanned high profile visit to the United Arab Emirates. However, the visit to Qatar could not have happened if the eight Indians who were in detention since August 2022, continued to stay in detention.
According to these sources, an assurance was shared by the Qatari team that the eight Indians would be released before the PM applied for his visit to Dubai. And fulfilling their promise, the Qatar government released the eight Indians before the PM left for Abu Dhabi on 13 February. These developments, for two weeks, were kept under wraps as a premature celebration or leaking of the news could have invited unnecessary interference from those entities who did not want India-Qatar ties to normalize. These sources said that the PM had personally spoken to the Emir to secure their release and it was the logical conclusion of these positive talks that they were released and the PM personally met the Emir in Doha to thank the latter. This intervention by PM Modi smoothened the differences that had emerged among the two teams.
Till then, Indian officials were finding it hard to bring their Qatari counterparts on the same page on the release of the eight Indians. The Ministry of External Affairs noted in an official statement on Thursday, that PM Modi expressed his “deep appreciation” to the Emir of Qatar for the step that he had taken. This has been attributed to the mutual respect that both of them have for each other. The Emir, despite pressures from vested global interests to let the issue fester— which would have impacted the carefully nurtured bilateral ties that he and PM Modi had developed—released the eight men even as their case was pending in the local court in Doha. Sources said that the fact there was no strong evidence to support the offence that they were being accused of also played a role in the way this whole matter was settled.