Passport, visa, equipment worth Rs 6-7 crore lost, stranded alone in Europe: Survival of 16-year-old Md Imran, India’s future chess grandmaster

The Story of Survival of 16 Year Old Md Imran (Special Arrangement) NEW DELHI: The bus left just after 8pm. Hungry after eight hours on the road, Md Imran got off during a scheduled ten-minute stopover in Bratislava, Slovakia, just looking for biscuits and coffee. He returned to the platform in time and frantically waved at the driver to wait. The driver looked at him, waved contemptuously from his seat, and drove off anyway.Everything Imran owned disappeared with that bus. His passport. His Schengen visa. His American student visa, which was supposed to transfer him to a scholarship at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) this fall. His phone, his power banks, his diary, equipment worth nearly Rs 6 to 7 lakh. It all came down to Budapest without him, the night before the tournament he still had to play last June.At just 16, Imran was stranded alone in a foreign country. Fortunately, as it turned out, being alone in a foreign country was something he already had a decade of experience with.

The kid who just watched TV

Imran didn’t start playing chess because someone saw a prodigy in him. He started around the age of seven because his parents in Kakinada, Andhra Pradesh wanted him away from the screens.“I think it was introduced to me just to stay a little bit away from all kinds of electronic devices because I was consuming a lot of electronic media then,” Imran told TimesofIndia. com during an exclusive interaction. “I watched TV from morning to night.Chess was one of several activities his parents tried for him; skating, swimming and gymnastics were different, but that was what remained.

Md Imran (Special Arrangement)

He started beating everyone at his local academy under coach Leela Kumar, who first suggested he try tournaments. An explosion followed rather than progress. In less than a year, Imran gained roughly 900 rating points, jumping from 1035 to 1958.He looked at tournaments abroad and arranged sponsorship worth two to three crore rupees to fund them. Then COVID hit. The sponsorship evaporated.“When we asked about the amount, they said it was not possible,” he recalled. “Even their contingencies were worse, so they can’t produce that amount.Chess moved almost exclusively online for two years.When the on-board tournaments resumed, Imran’s family had already been kicked out of the adult-traveling version of this trip. During 2023, he made occasional trips abroad with friends or his mother. Then, in June 2024, at the age of 14, he started traveling all by himself.“The only reason I traveled alone and decided to travel alone is just to keep costs down,” he said bluntly. “If I could get one of my parents or a legal guardian… I have to pay for another person. We’re not in that state at all.”

“You realize very quickly that your systems are going to fail you”

What happened next reads less like a sports story and more like a story of survival. Last month, Imran arrived in Budapest after midnight with nothing. The station was locked so he couldn’t make a report. No hotel would take him without a physical passport as this is required by European law for check-in.He ran to the drivers of other bus companies and begged for help. FlixBus chat support told him to file a complaint online.He had a phone. He was so lucky.“Usually not,” he said of traveling with a loaded device. “I travel with two phones and two power banks, but luckily I got out with my main phone in hand. That was my absolute lifesaver.”“I have filed a number of official complaints both with FlixBus and the authorities, but I have not received an iota of help,” Imran said. “The cold truth is that they have done absolutely nothing, and my conclusion is that they are completely unreliable.For most people, this is the point where the story stops. For Imran, it was the starting line for Saturday’s first Round Robin, a tournament he traveled to specifically to reach Grandmaster standard. He had every reason to withdraw. He had a high fever. He spent the morning shuttling between police stations and the American embassy instead of preparing for the opening. Still, he decided to play.He finished 7/9, undefeated, and earned his first Grand Championship standard. Later came a second norm with an identical run of 7/9 at the 5th Riga Janos Memorial.Three weeks ago it was rated 2460 with zero standards. Now at 2496, he only needs one open norm to complete the title.

On the verge of becoming a grandmaster

“I never had real, consistent coaching,” he, who is now back in India after being issued a new passport, told the website. “I always felt like I was just wasting money on them and they could never give me the right time anyway. So I decided to do everything myself.”He became an International Champion himself in 2024. He just passed the 2500 mark. Both GM norms came the same, except for a short, targeted help: stretching with IM Radoslav Gajek from 2023 to 2025 and Levin Guy, an Israeli player rated 2473, who reached out after learning about the incident in Bratislava and offered to second him for free.

Md Imran with his GM standard (special arrangement)

The volume behind the rise of self-taught is staggering in itself. Roughly 257 rated games in 2024 and 283 in 2025, according to his account, the most of any player in the world that year.

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Share an opinion“I would never advise anyone to go that route,” he said. “I didn’t have a single ideal resource that a player should have to even become an IM. I was at odds with every ideal way to improve in chess.”When asked what he would actually say to someone still trying to follow his path: “The only thing you need is to believe in yourself,” he replied. “If you believe in God, then of course you have to believe in God more than you believe in yourself. And then you have to believe in yourself. That’s it.”

A family of four and a debt before the bus

Imran’s household is small compared to the scale of what he carries: his mother, a housewife; his father, a 22-year-old police officer stationed in Visakhapatnam; and a younger brother, four years behind him.“We are not doing well financially or at all,” Imran said. “I think we even have a loan of around 40, 50 million rupees that my father took in the last two years alone. Bratislava’s losses simply piled up on it. “It’s nowhere better,” he said. “We are definitely experiencing great difficulties even now that I have reached these two standards.

This is the first thing why I slowly started to gradually lose interest in chess.

International Master Md Imran

When Imran became an international champion two years ago, he expected his country to take notice. Andhra Pradesh has not produced an IM for seven or eight years, he said, and its own sports policy promises cash prizes for FM and IM titles. Imran and his family applied for it a year and a half ago.“So far we have not received any help to raise this amount,” he said. “I have no idea.”The silence, more than the bus in Bratislava, is what actually eroded his relationship with the game.“That’s the first thing why I slowly started to lose interest in chess,” he admitted. “The only people who respected my situation and respected my position were the USA Chess Team,” he said of his UTRGV scholarship.He now describes his relationship with the sport in a strikingly neutral way: “I don’t necessarily love chess, but I also hate it. I just want to finish this title. I don’t have any great passion behind it. It’s just because of the support that I didn’t get like other people.”

A call for help

He now has a new passport; his application for a Schengen visa is being reviewed. His F-1 visa was already approved before the tragic incident on the bus. The visa must be reissued to his new passport by the US consular office.READ ALSO: India has 98th CEO! Both Parents Chess Coaches 10th Board Exam Forced Break: By Aswath SHe emailed both the Budapest embassy and the Hyderabad consulate notifying them of the emergency, but neither has responded, so he has no confirmed route or timeline to reissue the visa before his tentative August 23 deadline.“I really want somebody to help me, by any means they potentially can,” he said. “I really hope I can get my visa sooner because I definitely can’t afford to miss out.