Tinsukia: The parents from Assam on Friday appealed to the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and State Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma to bring back Stranded Indian Students from Sumy (a city in north-eastern Ukraine) soon and safe.
About five hundred students, among which forty to fifty students from Assam, are stranded still. As Indian evacuation efforts focus on western Ukraine, Indian students in eastern and the Northeastern parts of the country especially Sumy are sending an urgent appeal for help because it is not practically possible for the students to reach the 24-hour long journey to the western part of the country.
This correspondent spoke with the parents of a medical student Hrishikesh Deka who is stranded in war-torn Ukraine.
A resident of upper Assam’s Tinsukia District, Deka is a student of the first year at State Medical University who informed his parents here that he along with other Indian students have been taking shelter in a bunker for the last four days.
Their lives are at stake and they are running out of food and other essential items. There are around 400-500 Indian students stranded in Sumy and of them, 40-50 are from the state, he informed.
“Our lives are in danger because we are only 53 km from the Russian border. We cannot go out to buy food and the provision stores are running out of things. Moreover, our ATM cards are not working,” Hrishikesh said while describing his plight to his parents here over the phone in the presence of this correspondent.
“We are in contact with the Indian Embassy here and the officials of the embassy informed us that they are doing their best to evacuate us. But we are still stranded here,” he said.
Two medical students from Goreswar in the newly-created Tamulpur district have also been left stranded in Ukraine after Russia started its military operations. Manoj Kumar Deka of Goreswar Town and Sneha Deka of Baghdova area both students of Kharkiv University are stranded in Ukraine.
The government informed that altogether 58 students of Assam has been evacuated till yesterday. The government of Assam has a list of 160 people stranded in Ukraine.
“We appeal to the Chief Minister and the Prime Minister to bring back the students soon and safe,” Sanjeev Kumar Deka, father of Hrishikesh said in a video along with his wife Anju.
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