Students from state say being turned away at border checkpoints

A student from Vadodara told The Indian Express, “We have been waiting in the freezing cold since Friday evening and the Ukrainian border guards are not allowing us to cross over to Poland… They have segregated the girls and boys. Some of the girls were allowed to go after 40 hours but thereafter, there has not been a single Indian allowed. They are hitting and kicking Indian students, who are asking questions and telling us to return to our universities. Some of us are injured too..”

Gyanisha Patel from Vadodara, who along with her friend cleared the Shehyni check post on Sunday, took close to 36 hours to exit from Ukraine on Monday evening.

“We were made to wait even after being allowed to cross the check post. They were just not willing to stamp our passports for the exit. Thankfully, there was shelter and food between the checkpoint and the exit point… We have now reached Poland and are awaiting further instructions from the Embassy of India. We have been given to understand that since very few Indian students have been allowed to cross over, we are not a sufficient number for the repatriation flight to take off… Our friends back in Ukraine are at risk and we are worried about them.”

Some Indian students from medical universities in Lviv, who arrived at the Poland-Ukraine border on Sunday, walking eight hours to cover a stretch of 30 kilometres, decided to return to their hostels.
Faiz Palanpuri, a resident of Vadodara and a first-year student at Danylo Halytsky Lviv Medical National university, said that the students were now following the fresh advisory from the Embassy of India to board a bus to the Ukraine border with Hungary.

Palanpuri told The Indian Express, “On Saturday, we began walking from Lviv and covered a distance of about 30 kilometres in eight hours to reach the Shehyni border on foot… There was a six-kilometre long queue of students, mostly Indians, waiting to be let out… We waited on Sunday but since no Indian students were being allowed to leave, we began walking back to Lviv for another eight hours. We returned to our hostel this afternoon and are now preparing to board the bus to the Hungarian border as advised by the Embassy of India. We are 300 of us.”

Palanpuri said that Lviv being relatively spared of conflict, the students could take the risk of returning. “We know many of our friends from other far off universities, who are stranded at the Poland border; some have been assaulted too. One friend lost his passport in the commotion and the police were called to help him find his passport.”

Further away in the Ukraine capital Kyiv, Indian students stranded in medical colleges say they are “relieved” that the curfew has been relaxed and they have been advised to reach railway stations, but “are terrified” of the journey.

Fourth-year medical student from Vadodara said, “We have been living in the basement of a residential complex ever since the conflict broke out here, rationing the supplies and mostly surviving on biscuits… sometimes people from the neighbourhood, who could take the risk came by to offer some food. So many families with children were also trapped in bunkers with so much shelling outside.”
The student added that with the advisory from the Embassy of India, the students have decided to leave. “We are relieved that the advisory has come… we had almost lost hope of being evacuated… However, we are also terrified of what the journey will be like when we step out. We have heard that there have been attacks on Indian students in the other borders, we are just going by what the Embassy is telling us and heading to the railway station…”

Meanwhile, some medical students from Ternopil university landed from Vadodara arrived in Delhi on repatriation flights via Bucharest in Romania. The students said that “several friends” had been left behind in danger.