21 J’khand students stranded in Manipur return home

Ranchi/Daltonganj: A total of 21 students, who were stranded in violence-hit Manipur, were evacuated by the state government on Tuesday. Hailing from different districts, they landed in Patna in the morning and continued their journey back home by a bus, sources in the chief minister’s office (CMO) said.
They were enrolled in IIT-Manipur, NIT-Imphal, Central Agricultural university, Manipur, National Sports University (NSU), Imphal.
State disaster management department secretary Amitabh Kaushal said, “Our people were brought via Patna as it was a more convenient route to save time amid the prevailing chaos. We had managed 21 seats in the Imphal-Patna flight. Some other students refused to return.”
The district panchayati raj department official, Birendra Kumar Choubey, posted in Ranchi as magistrate went to Patna along with a team of police personnel to monitor the exercise.
Reena Sinku, a first-year student of Bachelor of Science in physical education with the NSU-Imphal, said, “I am happy to finally reach home amid the turbulent situation in Manipur. The university declared vacation but we were unable to return. There were also issues of food at the hostel due to erratic supplies because of curfew.”
Ankit Kumar Gupta, a resident of Nagar Untari in Garhwa who is pursuing B.Tech second-year computer science and engineering at NIT-Imphal, said, “The violence was very severe. There were arson and smoke all around. Our mess stopped giving us rotis because wheat flour became scarce. We were denied breakfast but none is to be blamed at the hostel due to the prevailing situation.”
Bijo Murmu, another student at NIT-Imphal who hails from Jamshedpur, added, “We lived in the hostels all these days with the windows shut due to fear and our own safety issues.”
Meanwhile, an official manning the state migrant control room on Tuesday said they were receiving innumerable calls from the labourers stranded in Manipur wanting to return and that they were in the process of verifying the calls before sending the list to the government.
“Since morning, several labourers reached out to us on the helpline numbers mentioned wanting to return, but we couldn’t verify their credentials owing to network congestion. As per the norms, migrant control room calls back every caller after registering the grievance to verify the credentials before sending the details to the state government. We are in the process of identifying them,” he added.