It’s -7 degrees. I’m cold. I don’t know what to do.” This message from an Indian medical student stuck in the Ukrainian border with Poland summed up the plight and desperation of hundreds like him making a perilous dash to safety, but were left stranded in the freezing cold, without shelter, food, and money, and their phones dying fast.
Their families back home insisted students hire private vehicles in Ternopil on Friday and head north because the Indian embassy told them to reach Ukraine‘s border with either Poland or Hungary as the evacuation would start there.
More followed that route and now hundreds of them remained trapped on the border on Saturday night without food, shelter and water as Ukrainian border guards were not allowing them through check points. They alleged that the guards were letting only Russian, Polish and Ukrainian citizens through the border and demanding bribes of $200 from each Indian student to make the crossing. They also alleged that Indian embassy officials were not listening to them either.
“I was told to reach the border and now these people are not allowing us to enter. We are at gunpoint. Police have told us not to take any videos of the situation,” said Shubham Meshram (22) of Bhopal, who is among the group that travelled 12 hours from Ternopil to reach Polish border.
“We will try again. Otherwise, we have to return to Ternopil,” he said, pleading with the Indian government to rescue them. Families of three Haryana students trapped on the Ukraine-Poland border blamed it on the Indian embassy’s “wrong advisory” on February 25. “The embassy said Indians are being rescued from Ukraine through Poland, so they should reach the Polish border. After this, they reached the Ukraine-Poland border by spending 600 hryvnia (about Rs 1,500) per student and walking about 45 km. But now, they are not being allowed to cross the border,” a family member said.
They said Ukraine immigration officials have turned them back, saying: “When your government has not cooperated with us, why should we cooperate with you.” Besides, passports of many students were destroyed or lost in the chaos.
Students from Kerala were stuck at Shehyni-Medyka border crossing on Saturday. “Shehyni is around 80km from Lviv. We had to walk around 20km to reach here. We went to another checkpoint where we were told that we can only cross by vehicles.,” said Mohammed Jiad of Kalamassery. Chandramohan Nelloor, a Kerala expat in Poland, said people have been calling him from Ukraine. “Some of our students said when they (guards) see Indians, they’re being pushed aside.” Around eight students from Odisha boarded packed buses in Ternopil for Romania in accordance with Indian authorities’ advice.
(Inputs from Ramendra Singh in Bhopal, Kumar Mukesh in Hissar, Neel Kamal in Bathinda, Sushil Rao in Hyderabad, Naomi Canton in London and TNN Kochi, Bhubaneswar, Ahmedabad)
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