Kathmandu, June 17 (IANS) Nearly two dozen Nepali students stranded in violence-hit Kyrgyzstan have been given safe haven in the Indian embassy in the Central Asian country’s capital Bishkek, Nepal’s official media said Thursday.
Twenty students from Nepal who were studying medicine in the southern city of Osh had found themselves in trouble after ethnic violence broke out June 10, killing nearly 200 people.
Rapidly running out of money and fearing for their lives, the students waited for the Nepal government to rescue them and bring them home.
However, the coalition government of Nepal, locked in a fierce power struggle with the opposition Maoist party, has turned a deaf ear to their pleas.
The foreign ministry has also pleaded lack of funds and reportedly told the families of the students that they would have to pay for their wards’ passage back home.
Nepal’s official media quoted the guardians of the stranded students as saying that they were sheltering at the Indian embassy in Bishkek.
The Nepali embassy in Moscow had learnt about the students from the Indian embassy, the Rising Nepal daily said.
In the past too, India, Nepal’s southern neighbour, has bailed out Nepalis from trouble-hit countries.
Four years ago, when violence erupted in Lebanon, India helped evacuate Nepalis on Kathmandu’s request.
The Indian gesture comes even as a section of the Nepali media, as well as the opposition Maoist party, have been flaying the Indian government for alleged attacks on Nepali-speaking people in the northeastern state of Meghalaya.
