Nischith N | NT
As war ravages Ukraine and anxious parents wait for their children to be evacuated, some students in Bengaluru have taken it upon themselves to help Indians trapped in the eastern European nation.
Students from Dayananda Sagar University led by one Pranav Kashyap from the College of Journalism and Mass Communication have so far been approached by more than 150 to 200 Indians stranded in Ukraine. “Being media students, we feel it is our duty to work for the people who are in need because Indians students are really struggling in the war field to get back to their homeland. When we started contacting them, they were in a bad situation. We are in touch with many people and they have made it through the border and are still stranded in a camp near Bucharest airport for the fourth day in a row. We are trying to give them information and coordinate with the families,” Kashyap said. There are estimated to be about 70 Indian students in the Bucharest airport camp. Indian embassy officials were assured that they’d be boarding a flight to India on Monday, but nothing has happened so far, the stranded students said.
Sanjay, a fifth year medical student from Kerala who had been waiting at a shelter near the Bucharest Airport said that he was finally able to get a boarding pass to an evacuation flight. However, he added a lot of hardship preceded relief. “Thankfully the shelter is handled by a Romanian NGO and the students are taken care of. The situation is really chaotic. It’s like a refugee camp here. We have students sleeping in sleeping bags, there are some tents which are set up, and we also have students sleeping in the open. It is extremely cold here. No representative of the Indian Embassy is here. We were assured that at least one official would be present, but no one is giving attention to anyone here. It’s totally uncoordinated. Students are arriving out of their will and just hoping they will get through the border. There are no assurances after getting to the border here. We don’t know what to do next. There is no indication or direction given to us after getting to the border. Our embassy doesn’t have any sort of transportation method or coordination. The situation is incompetent here.”
“We are in touch with these Indians because they panic and have no idea what to do next and which way to go. As all of them are at the shelter, they don’t have that much information of what is happening out and how our embassy is reacting. So we are trying to reach out to these students with all the information available with us. We are doing this in the guidance of fellow students, our lecturers and college management,” Kashyap added.