UKRAINE CRISIS: 3 months before MBBS degree, war horror for Panchkula's Aanchal Sharma

Tribune News Service

Amit Bathla

Panchkula, March 5

It couldn’t be more unfortunate for Aanchal Sharma of Sector 4 here to return home from Ukraine just three months before the completion of her MBBS degree.

A student of Kyiv Medical University, the 25-year-old took an arduous journey to reach Hungary border to leave behind the horrifying destruction in war-torn Ukraine.

She claims the evacuation of Indian students is “messy and chaotic”. “It lacks rules and regulations,” she says. Throughout the journey, she had to struggle for proper food, water, accommodation and even sleep.

“We were forced to survive on half-filled stomach and sleep deprived,” she says. It was on February 24 when she saw some videos online of Ukraine invasion. The same day, the Indian Embassy advised Indian students to “stay where you are” and “return to their cities”.

“I don’t wake up before 10-11 am, but on February 24, repeated calls from my family in India caused me to rise from sleep around 7 am. We realised the situation is turning grim,” she says. For the next two days, they had to stay in bunkers during night hours amid loud explosions.

She says the advisories from the Embassy came but a bit late.

After they were told to leave Kyiv urgently by any available means on February 28, her group left for the railway station, where she had to go through discrimination and wait for around 9 hours to finally board a train for Lviv.

“From there, we took a bus to move towards Hungary and finally reached the border to avail the facility of evacuation provided by the Indian embassy,” she says.

She adds, “Our struggle didn’t end after we left war-torn Ukraine. After reaching Budapest, we were struggling to find accommodation. The Embassy authorities’ lack of coordination kept us struggling for food and place to live.”

Finally, on Friday evening, she flew from Budapest to New Delhi in a rescue flight of Operation Ganga. When she touched down in Delhi, it was a moment of relief for her and her family. Now back home, she hopes for the end of the war to complete her studies.

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