BHUBANESWAR: The death of an Indian student Naveen Shekharappa in Russian shelling on Tuesday has rattled the others including those from Odisha who are now making desperate attempts to leave Ukraine’s Kharkiv. Though, only a few have been successful in escaping the war zone in the last 24 hours.
While around 30 to 40 students from Odisha managed to leave Kharkiv late on Monday evening and early on Tuesday, hundreds of others are still hiding in bunkers and metros amidst massive bombardments with no cash, food and water.
Pankaj Kumar Mohanta of Mayurbhanj, who was close to Derzprom when a Russian missile exploded this morning, said every minute counts now. “The situation is critical and the Russian military offensive is increasing by every passing minute. There is absolutely no way we can move out on our own now,” he said.
In the morning, a bomb went off near the metro in Heroiv Prasti at Kharkiv where three Odia girls Liza Kap, Sonali Mishra and Lozarin Sahoo are stranded. They said the bomb exploded just 200 metres away from the metro and since then, there have been continuous gunfire.
“We are just three Indian girls left in this metro apart from some locals. We tried hiring a taxi to Voksal railway station (15 km away) but the driver demanded 2,500 Ukrainian Hryvnia (Rs 6,298 Indian rupees) which we do not have now. Everything is closed and our bank ATM cards and UPIs are no longer working,” said Sonali, a 5th-year student of the Kharkiv National Medical University.
The girls who had been without food since morning walked down to hostel-5 near Oleksivska green metro in the evening and decided to stay put there till Wednesday. “We plan to walk down to Studentska railway station tomorrow morning where we might get a train,” added Liza.
On the other hand, a group of eight Odia students took the risk of walking for 10 km amid airstrikes to reach Voksal railway station early on Tuesday. Asish Bishi, one among them, said they paid $100 each just to enter the station. But when they tried to board a train at 8 am, all of them were thrown out by locals.
“This station receives three trains in a day and the number of people waiting here is in the thousands. We managed to get into another train late in the evening by paying $150 each,” said Bishi, also a student of the medical university, who is headed to Poltava (central Ukraine). He added that all of them are only left with a few packets of biscuits. On Monday evening, a few of his classmates from Odisha managed to catch a train to Lviv.
The students, however, expressed resentment over the Indian Embassy doing little for them. Another Odia Sruti Rath who is at Peremoha said students in this corner of the city have been told by their agencies to remain prepared with just one bag and passport as there may be an evacuation of Indian students. Meanwhile, as per the office of State Resident Commissioner in New Delhi, 17 students of Odisha returned to India (in Delhi and Mumbai airports) on Tuesday morning and five more are reaching the country by the 9.30 pm flight, taking the total to 22.