Taxis, security escort help Indian students escape violence-hit Bangladesh
Indian students back home on Friday from Bangladesh, where violence has erupted between protesters and security forces.
At least 20 people have been killed in the clashes this week — most of them in the capital Dhaka — with police firing tear gas and rubber bullets to scatter protesters who also torched vehicles and establishments. The protesters oppose a system of quotas for government jobs.
Some mobile internet services were cut off on Thursday and telecom links remained widely disrupted on Friday.
For Hussain, who studies at a private medical college in Bangladesh's Manikganj district, about 50 km (30 miles)from Dhaka, being cut off from his family in India was especially «stressful».
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«Our college was not affected by the violence but we heard there was trouble in the town (about 15 minutes away),» he told Reuters.
As news came in of students being killed in Dhaka, Hussain and about 80 others from his college hired private taxis to travel to the border that Bangladesh shares with India's eastern state of West Bengal, about 170 km away.
The Indian High Commission (embassy) in Bangladesh also provided the students with a security escort after they requested for it, Hussain said.
Leaving their college at 2.30 a.m., the group reached the border six hours later but crossed it only in the afternoon after clearing immigration.
For Hussain, the journey will continue for another day as he travels to his hometown, Dhubri, in Assam state.
«It has been
