Srinagar: Around a dozen Kashmiri students including four girls are stranded in Gandhinagar, Gujarat amid the prevailing COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown and have appealed the Jammu and Kashmir government to facilitate their return home.
The students pursuing Doctor’s and Master’s programmes in different fields at the Central University of Gujarat in Gandhinagar told Kashmir Reader over phone that the soaring temperatures in the capital was taking a toll on them even as authorities had tightened the prevailing lockdown restrictions in the area.
The panic around the pandemic and the lockdown had drained them mentally, they said and appealed authorities to facilitate their return.
The students, who are currently putting up at the varsity hostel, said it should not be a big deal for the J&K government to bring a mere 12 of them back to valley when it had facilitated return of hundreds of students recently, the latest being the over 350 students, who were brought back to their home districts on Monday from Rajasthan.
“We have been in self quarantine for the last one and half month, but we want to return to our home because it is unbearable now,” a female student said.
She said that they could not even fast in the ongoing holy month of Ramadhan due to the prevailing conditions.

Irshad Khan