‘Escaped clutches of death, it was the worst nightmare’

LUCKNOW: “Air raid sirens still ring in my ears,” said 21-year-old

Shreya

Singh of Agra after landing in Delhi from Romania on Monday. As many as 298 students were also evacuated from Bucharest along with her.


As Shreya came out of the airport, she hugged her mother

Santosh

with tears rolling down her cheeks.

“I escaped the clutches of death,” said Shreya, a student of Ivano Frankivsk national medical university in Ukraine.

“I heard explosions for the first time in my life on February 24. All grocery stores, ATMs were empty soon. I was rushed into a bunker around 30 feet below the ground at -2 degrees Celsius,” she said.

Our nightmare started when we booked a bus to the Romanian border on Friday as per the advice of the embassy, she added.

“There was a long queue, so we had to get down from the bus and walk 30 km carrying our luggage without food and water. We reached the border at night in the freezing cold and spent the night in the open,” she recalled.

“I fainted and lost my luggage. A group of male Indian students helped me cross the border,” said Shreya.

Karishma Singh and Kamna Singh, sisters from

Kannauj

and students of Ternopil National Medical University said the trauma would haunt them for long.


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