A 17-year-old medical student from Haryana has refused to leave the war-torn Ukraine to assist her landlord's family, who has joined the country's army to resist the advancing Russian soldiers. Despite the dire prospect of war, Neha has chosen to stay in a Kyiv bunker with his landlord's wife and three young children, despite the fact that she had the opportunity to be evacuated.
"I may or may not live," Neha told her mother, a teacher in Charkhi Dadri, Haryana, "but I will not abandon these children and their mother in these circumstances."
Neha couldn't find a hostel when she first came in Ukraine, so she chose to rent a room at the home of a construction engineer in Kyiv. Savita Jakhar, a close friend of Neha’s mother, told The EducationIndia, “Neha got attached to the children of the house-owner. She got advisories to leave the country as the war seemed imminent. Her mother made frantic efforts to arrange for her daughter’s evacuation. Finally, the girl got an opportunity to cross over to Romania, but she refused to abandon the affectionate family she has been staying with at this critical juncture.” Savita said that Neha’s family members and acquaintances have been trying to convince her to return to India, but she has plainly and firmly refused to do so.
Savita, an educator who belongs to Jhanswa village in Jhajjar district of Haryana, is now a French national presently based in Copenhagen, Denmark.
n a Facebook post Savita wrote, “It’s going to be 4 a.m. I feel restless and couldn’t sleep all night. A very close friend’s 17-year-old daughter is stuck in Kyiv where she had gone to pursue her bachelor’s degree…The owner of the house where she has been staying joined the army a couple of days ago. As of now, the girl is staying in a bunker with the home-owner’s wife and three children,”.
“More than her own mother, she is more concerned about the mother who is now alone with her kids.”, Savita added.
Neha lost her father, an army-man, a couple of years ago. She got admission in a medical college in Ukraine in 2021.
Needless to say, Neha’s father would indeed be proud of his daughter’s fearlessness and compassion.