Vande Bharat Mission: Indians, including medical students from J-K, to leave from Bangladesh today

The first Air India flight from Bangladesh to Srinagar carrying 167 passengers, including all medical students from Jammu and Kashmir, will leave for India at 11 a.m. on Friday.

The Air India flight from Bangladesh to Srinagar, carrying 167 stranded passengers including all medical students from Jammu and Kashmir, will leave for India at around 11 am on Friday. The students expressed gratitude towards the Central government and the Indian Embassy in Bangladesh for finally heading home.

Khadiya Rasheed, one of the students at a college in Bangladesh, said, "Thank you so much for our evacuation, we are happy to reach our homes, my college and the Indian Embassy both helped us, they were helping us continuously." Another student said, "I would like to thanks the minister of external affairs, and the Indian Embassy here who are evacuating us in such difficult circumstances. I highly appreciate that they made the evacuation as soon as possible, our college administration and local friends too helped us."

The people had to register online and the embassy would then send the tickets through e-mail. The High Commission of India in Bangladesh took to Twitter and said," The First Batch of Indian Students have arrived at the airport for boarding Air India flight home to India. They are being assisted in completing the formalities by the embassy."

As coronavirus pandemic continues, the repatriation is being carried out under India's massive evacuation effort named 'Vande Bharat Mission', which began on Thursday. Air India plans to operate 64 flights till May 13 to bring back around 15,000 Indian nationals stranded abroad amid the coronavirus-induced lockdown. (ANI)