Trapped in bunker without food in Ukraine's Kharkiv, four girls from Punjab, Chandigarh send out SOS

Raj Sadosh

Abohar, March 3

Trapped in Kharkiv due to the unavailability of transport, four girl students, namely Diksha Vij of Abohar, Harpreet Kaur and Sargundeep Kaur of Amritsar and Shellwin Kutlehria of Chandigarh, in a video message, said two urgent advisories to leave the city on Wednesday forced them to cover 8 km on foot to board a train, which they couldn’t due to heavy rush.

“No special trains have so far been arranged for stranded Indians students.”

“We had to return from the station. Then an agent advised us to move to a safe settlement following which we again covered 12 km on foot to a bunker, where we are staying without food. The only way out is to provide us transport to the nearest the border. We seek immediate help from the Indian Embassy,” the girls added.

MBBS student Rijul, Anoopgarh native, today informed her mother Priyanka and father Ajay Saraswat that she along with a group of students entered Slovakia from Rubizhne in Ukraine late last night after 24-hour cab travel that was followed by a 25-km walk. People in Slovakia, who had arranged food, greeted them. They have been issued a 20-day visa to facilitate easy evacuation to India. While leaving Rubizhne, we had to crawl on the road to keep ourselves safe from shelling, she added.

Another MBBS student, Himanshu Khandelwal, informed his parents that he along with a group of students had entered Romania. Indian officials had assured to arrange a flight for them soon, he added.

So far, 11 students from Jalore, Jhunjhunu, Kota, Dausa, Rawatbhata, Hanumangarh, Churu, Barmer and Chittorgarh in Rajasthan have returned from Ukraine.