The student was shot while trying to leave Kyiv. The Indian embassy had asked all Indian nationals to leave the city on 1 March, by availing trains or through any other means possible.
There have been reports of an Indian student who has reportedly been shot in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, according to the union minister VK Singh, one of the four ministers sent to Ukraine’s neighbouring countries to oversee the evacuation of Indians who make it across the border.
“We heard reports that a student leaving Kyiv was shot. He was taken back into Kyiv and immediately taken to hospital. This is happening in the fighting,” he told ANI at Poland’s Rzeszow airport.
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According to the minister, the student was trying to escape from Kyiv but was wounded when shots were fired at him. He was reportedly taken back into the city and is undergoing treatment in a hospital.
According to figures of the Ministry of External Affairs, nearly 17,000 Indian nationals have left Ukraine’s borders since advisories were issued on 15 February. Over 6,000 have been flown back home, says the ministry. There were around 20,000 Indians, mainly medical students, in Ukraine before war broke out.
“The Indian embassy had earlier cleared on the priority that everyone should leave Kyiv. In the event of war, the gun bullet does not look at anyone’s religion and nationality,” General Singh was quoted as saying by ANI.
The news of this shooting comes soon after the death of another student, 21-year-old Naveen Shekharappa in Kharkiv on Tuesday. Naveen was in a queue outside a grocery store when he was killed in Russian shelling on a government building. He had been hiding in a bunker with other students and had stepped out to stock up on food before catching a train to the border.
As his family waits for the return of his mortal remains, a BJP MLA has reportedly stoked up controversy with his insensitive comments.
Responding to questions on the uncertainty over when Naveen’s body would be brought back to Haveri, his hometown, Arvind Bellad, BJP MLA representing the Hubli-Dharwad constituency in Karnataka, said, “While it is very challenging to bring back those who are alive, it has become even more difficult to bring back the dead because a dead body will consume more space on the flight. Instead, eight to 10 persons can be accommodated in place of a dead body, which would consume more space.”
“Ukraine is a war zone and everyone is aware of it. Efforts are being made and if possible, the body will be brought back,” Mr Bellad told reporters.
Meanwhile, in yet another scary incident, a fire broke out in Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant in Ukraine after a Russian attack. The station at Zaporizhzhia, an industrial city in southeast Ukraine, supplies an estimated 40 per cent of the country’s nuclear power. The fire has now been put out and no immediate rise in radiation levels have been detected. But the threat of a nuclear disaster looms as Russia continues to attack Ukrainian cities.
Thousands of students have been trying to escape Ukraine, trying to reach the borders on their own, often without any food and shelter from the extreme cold.
