New Delhi: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Monday asked the government to urgently share its evacuation plan with those stranded in Ukraine and their families and tweeted a video clip purportedly showing some girl students being harassed by the military there. He alleged that the government is not taking effective steps to bring Indian students home amid a Russian military offensive on Ukraine and that the prime minister is "missing in action".
"My heart goes out to the Indian students suffering such violence and their family watching these videos. No parent should go through this," he tweeted, sharing the 30-second video clip. "The GOI must urgently share the detailed evacuation plan with those stranded as well as their families. We can't abandon our own people," he said.
In another tweet, Gandhi said, "Conditions of Indians stranded in Ukraine are worsening. Yet, GOI is not taking effective steps to bring them home. As usual, PM is MIA (Missing in action)." He shared a second video clip in which an Indian girl student alleged that Indian embassy officials were rejecting and ignoring their distress calls, even after videos of girls being beaten up mercilessly at the Romanian border was sent. While the Indian embassy is advising students to take trains out of Kyiv and reach the border, the student says in the video, "they are not taking our calls and are completely ignoring us". She said all other countries have evacuated their citizens from Ukraine, "but the Indian government is doing nothing for us". "The border is about 800 km from our current location and how as students we are supposed to reach there on our own," she said, urging Indians to protest to put pressure on the government to help them get evacuated.
Gandhi and the Congress party have been criticising the government for not evacuating Indian students from Ukraine in time and have called for urgent steps to evacuate them after Russia attacked Ukraine. A number of Congress leaders have shared videos of Indian students in Ukraine highlighting their plight and making appeals to the Indian government to evacuate them soon.
The Congress also tweeted the video of Indians being beaten up in Ukraine and said, "These sticks on foreign land are falling on the honour and prestige of the country, not on the children of the country, Prime Minister ji. Leave elections, remove the stress of the children of the country, Prime Minister ji." Sharing the video, Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge said on Twitter, "It's heartbreaking to see Indian students being beaten in Ukraine. Most of them are saying they are getting no help from the Indian government." "PM Modi's top priority should have been these 20,000 students but instead he is focused on delivering speeches," Kharge said.