India, Nov. 2 -- A Sri Lankan woman has been stranded in the Cook Islands for three years and is desperate to go back home, but neither New Zealand nor Australia is approving her transit visa. Ruchira Ranasingha, 50, has spent three years on the tiny archipelago in the South Pacific, with visa troubles impacting her return home.

Ranasingha told the BBC that she is ready to go back "handcuffed, bound and gagged".

Her troubles began almost a decade ago when she had to close her small T-shirt factory in Sri Lanka due to financial hardship. Facing heavy debts and the death of her husband-who her brother notes was a drug addict killed about seven years ago-she left Sri Lanka in 2018 to work as a domestic caregiver in Hong Kong.

In December ...