THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Aleena Manoj, an MTech student at IIT Jammu, was having dinner with her friends at the hostel canteen around 8.30 pm on May 8 when the lights suddenly went out. During a mock security drill conducted on the campus earlier in the day, the students were informed that there would be a blackout after 10 pm. This was owing to the possibility of a retaliatory strike by Pakistan after India launched Operation Sindoor. But the sudden blackout caught them unawares.
A few hours later, amid the pitch darkness, the students heard heavy firing in the vicinity. They huddled together inside the hostel, fearing the worst. Little were they aware that the air defence system stationed in Jammu was busy shooting down Pakistani drones that came in by the dozens. After a few minutes, the explosions subsided, but a sleepless night lay ahead for the students.
“It was a first-time experience for us. Due to the loud firing, we couldn’t sleep anymore. With the curtains drawn, we were following the latest news updates on our mobile phones” Aleena, who hails from Kasaragod, told TNIE. She added that Pakistan’s flagrant act of choosing civilian centres for attacks was shocking and unheard of.
Some of the students who fell asleep woke up around 4.15 am when Indian air defence systems fired back at another round of drone attacks from the Pakistani side. From the morning of May 9, most of the terrified students started booking tickets to their native places. Aleena and her friends boarded a train later in the day and reached Delhi on Saturday morning.
Aleena was among the scores of Keralites whose travel from Delhi to their native places was facilitated by the Kerala House in New Delhi. The Kerala government also arranged facilities for the students to rest and refresh till it was time for their respective flights.
For Adharsh U and Adwaith Ashokan, both BTech students of Lovely Professional University in Phagwara, Punjab, the sight of many orange-coloured unidentified flying objects in the night skies was a frightening experience. “We initially thought those were missiles and took videos of them. Later, we heard loud explosions and thought they had landed somewhere nearby. It was only in the morning that we came to know that they were shot down by our air defence systems,” said Adharsh.
A total of 17 students from Kerala hired a mini-bus and set out from the University to Delhi on Friday evening. Though shaken by the nightmarish experience, the students lauded the country’s defence forces for repulsing the attack.