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‘In lots of circumstances, I did not take cash as a result of the Indian college students had run out of money.’
‘The most important excessive was the blessings that these college students’s mother and father used to present me on the telephone or ship messages thanking me on WhatsApp.’
IMAGE: Whereas many Ukrainians bus drivers raised the worth of bus tickets to $250 per Indian scholar, Moazam Khan continued to cost solely $20 to $25 to drive them to the Ukraine border.
When Nitesh Singh, founding father of Staff SOS India, obtained began on evacuating stranded Indian college students from Ukraine, he had no thought the way to deliver them again.
All he knew was that he would want a whole lot of buses and automobiles to make sure that the Indian college students attain the borders of Hungary, Poland, Slovakia or Romania.
He tried his finest to organise tour operators for buses however couldn’t discover one, till he managed to get in contact with a Pakistani citizen settled in Ukraine, Moazam Khan.
“Moazam was like a god-send for our group. He was very useful and lots of instances didn’t cost even a single greenback for the Indian college students who had no cash to pay,” Nitesh tells Rediff.com‘s Syed Firdaus Ashraf.
Ultimately depend, Moazam says he had organized secure passage for two,500 Indian college students caught in other places in Ukraine.
Talking to Rediff.com from Ternopil in Ukraine, Moazam says, “After I saved the primary batch of Indian college students, I had no thought the disaster was so big. Nonetheless, quickly I discovered that my cell quantity had gone viral on many Indian WhatsApp teams. After that I began getting continuous telephone calls in the midst of the evening for rescue operations. And until date, I’ve evacuated 2,500 Indian college students.”
Moazam got here to Ukraine 11 years in the past as his elder brother is married to a Ukrainian citize.;
Hailing from the Tarbela cantonment space close to Islamabad, Moazam studied civil engineering in Ukraine, however then gave up his profession as a civil engineer to start out a bus tour operator enterprise in Ukraine.
“I’ve been pals with many Indians even earlier than the Russia-Ukraine conflict began,” he says. “In these 11 years I’ve made many pals at Ternopil Nationwide Medical College. A lot of them have handed out and are again in India. They’re nonetheless in contact with me and we’re good pals.”
Based on Moazam, Indians really feel snug with him due to the frequent language hyperlink and due to this fact a join kinds between them instantly.
“In Ukraine speaking is essentially the most tough half for any foreigner. Folks right here solely communicate Ukrainian or some communicate Russian. English is spoken little or no. On this state of affairs, I communicate Urdu and a lot of the Indian college students communicate Hindi, so this connects us immediately. Hindi and Urdu are virtually the identical and due to this fact we gel nicely,” Moazam says.
From Ternopil, Hungary and Slovakia are a 5-hour drive whereas Romania is a 3-hour drive and Poland a two-and-a-half hour drive.
IMAGE: Indian nationals from war-torn Ukraine arrive on the Hindon Air Drive Station, Ghaziabad, after being evacuated by the Indian Air Drive’s C-17 plane from Rzeszow in Poland, March 7, 2022. {Photograph}: Amlan Paliwal/ANI Photograph
Moazam says he has misplaced depend as to what number of instances he drove Indian college students in his buses to the border of those nations.
“I had no time to depend. The one factor top-most in my thoughts was evacuation. If buses weren’t obtainable, I used to rearrange for personal automobiles or taxis,” he says.
“Security of life was the utmost precedence in my thoughts. Fortunately, Russians by no means bombed the areas by which I drove,” he provides.
Seeing the disaster and demand for buses going up, many Ukrainian bus drivers raised the worth of bus tickets to $250 per scholar to drive them to the Ukraine border however Moazam didn’t try this.
“I charged them solely $20 to $25. I knew these Indian college students had no cash. In lots of circumstances, I did not take cash as a result of that they had run out of money earlier than coming from Kyiv to Ternopil. The most important excessive was the blessings that these Indian college students’s mother and father used to present me on the telephone or ship messages thanking me on WhatsApp,” he says.
Moazam shared movies of Indian college students and screen-shots of WhatsApp messages with Rediff.com.
Recalling one Indian scholar asking for assist from Kyiv in the midst of the evening, Khan says, “He was stranded and had no thought the way to attain the border. He was affected by hypothermia. I referred to as the Crimson Cross and made preparations for his medicines. He obtained higher and reached Ternopil after 4 days. I dropped him on the border safely from the place the Indian embassy took him to India.”
Requested if as a Pakistani he felt any qualms about serving to Indians given the chequered historical past between the 2 nations, Moazam says, “You could have seen the current video of the Indian ladies’s cricket group taking part in with the newborn of a Pakistani participant. That’s love and humanity. The enmity is all politics, individuals of each the nations love one another.”
“We as people need the human contact on a regular basis, that offers us love and affection. I at all times hugged my Indian college students who left Ukraine. Hugging one another works massive time in such conditions. Please try this to different human beings who’re in misery within the war-like state of affairs,” he says.
Although he has evacuated 2,500 Indians from Ukraine, Moazam doesn’t wish to depart Ukraine as a result of half his household is caught in Sumy the place round 700 Indian college students are additionally nonetheless awaiting evacuation.
“My brother’s household is from Sumy. They’re caught in that metropolis now, they can not come. I can organize for transport for them, however the Russians have laid landmines on the roads. We do not know which can blast off and the place they’ve positioned it,” he says.
“Subsequently, leaving Sumy could be very harmful now,” says Moazam. “When a ceasefire takes impact between Ukraine and Russia, then we are able to evacuate them.”
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