130 Karnataka students back from Russia

BENGALURU: A special chartered flight brought 227 Indian medical students who had been stuck in Russia because of the pandemic to Bengaluru early on Tuesday. These include 130 students from Karnataka who were instrumental in arranging the flight.
Most of the evacuees went into institutional quarantine and will be reunited with their families after the safety period, provided they don’t show any symptoms of Covid-19.
One of the students, who didn’t want to be named, had been studying medicine in the Russian city of Tver. Some of his Indian classmates, from Delhi, Kochi, Nagpur and Chennai, left for home on a Vande Bharat Mission flight soon after Russia ordered a lockdown on March 28. But he and over 100 students from Karnataka were stranded in different parts of Russia as there were no direct flights to Bengaluru from Moscow.
Most Russian medical colleges closed for vacation and the students struggled with living expenses even as the number of coronavirus infections rose sharply in that country.
“We managed to reach out to MP [Rajya Sabha] GC Chandrashekhar of Karnataka Congress who offered to help us. He spoke to the authorities and the Indian embassy directed us to seek permission for a chartered flight to Bengaluru,” said another student.
Chandrashekhar’s efforts materialised last week as Indian authorities approved the flight. “After weeks of uncertainty and agony, we are at the airport and heading home,” medical student Prajwal told TOI before the aircraft departed for India. “We are a group of 130 from Karnataka and some students from Tamil Nadu and Kerala are also returning with us.”
He paid nearly Rs 34,000 for the journey, which started on Monday. The plane landed at the Kempegowda International Airport at about 4am on Tuesday.