Karnataka students back home after living through nightmare in war-torn Ukraine

KEY STORY

• After several nerve-wracking moments, there was big smiles on the faces of a bunch of medical students from Karnataka as they landed at the Chhatrapathi Shivaji International Airport in Mumbai on Saturday night from war-torn Ukraine.

• Among the first batch of 219 Indians to return, 12 are students from Karnataka. They were taken by bus on Friday afternoon from Chernivsti, Ukraine, to the Romanian border where they first heaved a sigh of relief. Speaking to TNSE, second-year student at the Bukovinian State Medical University, Mohammed Abid Ali, said, “Even though the bus carrying us reached the Romanian border within 35 minutes, the big traffic jam and the huge crowd of refugees forced us to wait for nearly 12-13 hours to cross the border.
  Timely support from the Indian embassy and the Union Government helped us reach India safely.”

• “Once we completed the immigration process, it took eight hours to reach Henri Coandă International Airport, Bucharest, from where we boarded the flight to Mumbai. As there was uncertainty over our return, we has stocked food to last a month. But we had to leave everything behind. I’m relieved to reach my motherland,” he added.

• “When our bus started moving towards the Bucharest airport, it was accompanied by a police convoy from both Ukraine and Romania and the vehicles had the Tricolour.” He also said that the Indian embassy had arranged for dinner and refreshments all through the journey. “Some of the embassy staff even boosted our confidence,” he added.

• Abid Ali took the lead to gather other students from Karnataka. He said they will be reaching Bengaluru by a connecting flight and added that some of his friends are reaching New Delhi on Sunday morning by another flight. Other students including Pooja, Vijaya, Shreya, Sayeeda Habeeba, Inchara, Monica, Nabeeha Huda, Tushar, Uday, Priya and Monica were with him and were about to board a flight to Bengaluru.