Indian Shot in Kyiv Evacuated Through Poland, Embassy Thanks Driver for 700 Km Ride
The Wire Staff
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New Delhi: Harjot Singh, the Indian national who had received three bullet injuries in Ukraine's capital of Kyiv, has now been evacuated through Poland, the Indian embassy in Ukraine has announced.
Singh, a 31-year-old information technology specialist who was in Kyiv for higher studies, had told The Wire that had been turned back from a checkpoint near Lviv on February 27. Which returning in a cab to Kyiv, he was caught in a gunfight. When he regained consciousness in a Kyiv hospital, it was March 2 and doctors told him that he had three serious injuries.
In the meantime, on March 1, India's foreign secretary H.S. Shringla had announced that all Indians had left Kyiv.
Singh had repeatedly attempted to contact embassy officials from his hospital, he told The Wire, adding that he was willing to pay for his passage out of the country.
On March 4, Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said that the ministry had seen media reports on Singh. “We are trying to see which hospital he is in,” Bagchi had said.
The Indian embassy in Ukraine has now written that Singh was "successfully transferred over more than 700km in the face of war zone constraints" of bombing and shelling.
Singh is now headed to India in the IAF C17 AC flight operated by the Air Force.
With two of the three bullet injuries to his legs, Singh had told The Wire that he is unable to walk and is temporarily wheelchair-bound. Doctors had labelled his survival a "miracle," he had said.
The embassy has, significantly, thanked the driver who helped transport Singh from Kyiv to the Bodomierz border with Poland. Without naming the driver, the embassy wrote that he did so under "dangers of shelling and constraints of fuel shortage, road blocks, detours and traffic jams."
While Russia's military had announced that it will hold fire and open humanitarian corridors in several Ukrainian cities, including Kyiv on Monday, it is unclear if this ceasefire benefitted Singh's evacuation operation in any way considering the length of the journey and the time it possibly took.
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