GUWAHATI: A fleet of taxis, a security escort, and a harrowing six-hour journey brought Asif Hussain and 80 other Indian students back home on Friday from Bangladesh, where violence has erupted between protesters and security forces.

Some mobile internet services were cut off on Thursday and telecom links remained widely disrupted on Friday.

For Hussain, who studies at a private medical college in Bangladesh’s Manikganj district, 50 kilometres from Dhaka, being cut off from his family in India was especially “stressful”. “Our college was not affected by the violence, but we heard there was trouble in the town (about 15 minutes away),” he said.

As news came in of students being killed in Dhaka, Hussain and about 80 others from his college hired private taxis to travel to the border that Bangladesh shares with India’s West Bengal state, about 170km away.

The Indian high commission in Bangladesh also provided the students with a security escort after they requested for it, Hussain said.

Leaving their college at 2.30am, the group reached the border six hours later, but crossed it only in the afternoon after clearing immigration. For Hussain, the journey will continue for another day as he travels to his hometown, Dhubri, in Assam state.

“It has been very scary…I have [still] not been able to speak to many of my friends in Dhaka,” he said.

Around 8,500 Indians are studying in Bangladesh — many of them pursuing medicine — India’s foreign ministry says, and about 15,000 Indians live in the country.

India’s Meghalaya state, which too shares a border with Bangladesh, is also helping to evacuate people, with officials saying more than 350 students from India, Nepal and Bhutan have entered through this route so far.

In an advisory, India urged its citizens in Bangladesh to minimise movement outside their residences. The foreign ministry said on Friday that all Indians in Bangladesh were safe.

Published in Dawn, July 20th, 2024