Student Who Refused To Leave Ukraine Without Pet Dog Reaches India With His Friend 'Maliboo'
Rishab Kaushik, a Dehradun resident who refused to leave war-torn Ukraine without his pet dog Maliboo, arrived in India early on Friday via Budapest, Hungary.
Kaushik is an undergraduate student of software engineering at the Kharkiv National University of Radio Electronics Engineering.
He had posted a video on Instagram regarding the difficulties he is facing in bringing his dog along with him to India, urging the Government to allow NOC.
His video led People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) to appeal to the Indian government to press for allowing the Indians to take their pets along with in the flights.
"There was a lot of documentation in India, the procedure was long. But in war-like situations, they should've allowed their own citizens. So, I had put up the appeal. A memorandum had come recently which stated that pets and even strays are now being allowed without NOC," Kaushik told ANI.
He was one of the few Indian students who had refused to leave the war-hit country without their pets.
Not the only student
Arya Aldrin, a medical student at National Pirogov Memorial Medical University in Vinnytsya, had reportedly said she won't leave her five-month-old Siberian Husky puppy Zaira behind.
After days of uncertainty, Arya was able to take a flight from Romania and landed in Delhi on Wednesday night.
A total of 798 stranded Indians were evacuated through the four Air Force flights that reached the Hindon airbase on Thursday. Besides them, there was a dog and a cat on one flight and two other cats on another flight.
The dog, a Siberian Husky, belonged to Yukta, a fourth-year MBBS student from Maharahstra's Pune. She boarded the special IAF flight from Poland.
She was in Lviv, a city in western Ukraine around 70 km off Poland border, where she got the dog along with her friends and named it "Neela".
"I am sure the puppy would have been a well-behaved passenger," Minister of State for Civil Aviation VK Singh, who is in Poland to facilitate the evacuation of Indian nationals, said on Twitter.
"Will see both (Yukta and Neela) of you again when I am back. Take care. Jai Hind," he added.
A cat belonging to another MBBS student was also on board the same flight, which reached Hindon around 6.15 am.
Two other cats came to India with their Indian master, who had got them in Ukraine.
They came in a flight that reached around 5.30 am.
Three cats and a dog were among the evacuees from war-hit Ukraine besides 798 stranded Indians who returned home early on Thursday.
Earlier on Tuesday, the Government of India issued a memorandum facilitating "a one-time relaxation measure" for bringing back pet dogs and cats along with stranded Indians who are being evacuated from war-hit Ukraine.
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