Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): “It has been ten hours and we're sitting on this road in freezing cold. We have no food to eat, no blanket to cover us and no Indian official to assist us. Temperature dropped below 0 degrees last night here at the border. Poland is just three checkposts away and yet so far, says an MP student stranded at the first checkpost of the Ukraine-Poland border, still waiting for assistance from either the Indian or the Polish officials.
“I spent the entire night on this road along with many of my friends and Ukrainian nationals trying to leave in this freezing cold, without any food, without any assistance. Embassy is not picking up our calls. Pankaj Garg who has been made the coordinator of our evacuation keeps putting our WhatsApp messages on 'seen' and never bothers to reply,” the 5th year medical student told Free Press over a phonecall, requesting anonymity as he didn't want to tense his family.
“We are stuck at the first checkpost of the border Shenyni-Medyka. There are three in total,” he adds.
Another student whose pursuing MBBS from Bukovenia and native of Ujjain, Shivani Sharma, says, “I left my city two days ago to reach Romania border. I spent 36 hrs on the bus roaming around in Kyiv. I finally reached the Romania border last night. And now I'm stuck here waiting for assistance. There's no Indian official on the other side to help us cross the border.”
Another student, Yash, who left for the Poland border at 11.10 pm UA time on Saturday (2.40 am Sunday IST), says, “We informed Pankaj Garg our taxi details and that we're leaving for the border. He saw the text but did not respond. Now that we've reached the first checkpost, he's not even picking up the calls. The temperature has dropped below 0 degrees last night and we were sitting on the road.”
The students also told Free Press that they had to arrange for private taxis that charged upto 200 USDs for inter-state transportation.
When Free Press tried to contact coordinating officer Pankaj Garg, his number was not reachable.
