16 medicos to return home from China

HYDERABAD: After a lot of struggle and tension, 16 students from Hyderabad, studying in Qiqihar Medical University in China, are all set to return home on Wednesday.

These students, whose varsity is situated in Heilongjiang, around 2,000 km from Wuhan, have been trying to return to India since the Coronavirus outbreak. On Sunday, they were to board a flight from Harbin International Airport in Heilongjiang for home. However, their hopes were dashed when they were not allowed to board the plane.

In a letter to External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, P Surya Teja, one of the students, wrote, “Since our parents are worried over our being present in China amidst this virus outbreak, they wanted us to come back to India before the matter turned more serious. We had a Harbin-Singapore-Hyderabad flight. But to our surprise, the airlines wasn’t allowing any foreigner living in China to travel or pass through Singapore as part of their quarantine measure.”“We were struggling hard to stay in the airport amid this terror-filled virus environment,” he added.

Surya claimed that no prior notice was given regarding the same. In the letter, they said they “were struggling hard to stay in the airport amid this terror-filled virus environment (SIC)”. After that, they tried searching for another flight, this time from Heilongjiang to Beijing.

They planned to go to Bangkok from Beijing, then to Chennai and finally to Hyderabad. On the intervening night of Sunday and Monday, they issued an SOS to city-based social activist Amjed Ullah Khan, and wrote a letter to the MEA urging them to ensure that their planned flight wasn’t cancelled.

Khan later confirmed that the students had boarded the flight and would reach the city in two days. However, he also slammed the Indian embassy in Beijing and accused it of “not doing enough” to help Indians in China. “Many have contacted me through social media and have urged me to help them,” Khan said.