‘His Blood Is on Your Hands’: Oppn Blames Govt for Naveen’s Death in Ukraine

Senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi tweeted that the condition of Indians stranded in Ukraine has been worsening and accused the government of “not taking effective steps to bring them home”.

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

The criticism of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government in its evacuation of Indian nationals from Ukraine has gone up a notch since an Indian student named Naveen was killed in Kharkiv due to shelling by Russia.

A fourth-year MBBS student, Naveen was a native of Chalageri village in Ranebennur taluk of Haveri district.

While some have criticised the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government for how the evacuation has been carried out, terming it a PR exercise, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi even mentioning the evacuation efforts in an election rally in Uttar Pradesh. Others have claimed that the Indian government has been caught napping.

Senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has said in tweets, that the condition of Indians stranded in Ukraine has been worsening and accused the government of “not taking effective steps to bring them home”.

Congress leader Shashi Tharoor said, “It is very clear that we have been caught napping as a country with such a large number of vulnerable civilians… 20,000 medical students and so on. We, arguably, should have made better preparations,” said Tharoor.

War of Words in Karnataka

Meanwhile, following the death of Naveen, former Karnataka Chief Minister, Siddaramaiah, said in a tweet,

“Very sad to know that Naveen, a native of Haveri, has succumbed to the attack by Russia in Ukraine. My deepest condolences to all his family members, friends & well-wishers.”

In another tweet, he said, “A young medical student with bright dreams had a long journey in saving lives, but was cut short due to failure of @BJP4India. Sufficient warnings were given by Russia & govt had lot of time to prepare for evacuation. Unfortunately, Naveen had to pay price for govt's ignorance.”

BJP National General Secretary, CT Ravi, retweeted this with a communal comeback, “Have you lost your mind worshipping your party owners, @siddaramaiah Avare? Or have you been sleeping for the last few weeks in your Jihadi$ World? If you were awake, you would have seen how hard PM @narendramodi Government has been working to bring Indians stranded in Ukraine.”

Responding to Ravi’s remark, the former CM said, “I have lost my mind seeing innocent Naveen sacrificing his life due to failure of Narendra Modi. When students were tense about war, it was your govt sleeping over warnings. If your govt was awake, Naveen would have been still alive. His blood is on your hands, which is sad.”

Meanwhile, it was observed that several on social media started blaming the Indian student from Karnataka for not having left Kharkiv on time.

Further blaming the Modi government, Congress leader Manish Tewari said,

“When the situation had started becoming portentous, we should have acted with dispatch and started getting people much earlier. Obviously, we have an embassy there. The embassy must have been sending regular inputs that the situation is deteriorating. You have an embassy in Russia, in Belarus… you have missions in all the countries around Ukraine. You have your own intelligence. You are in contact with foreign intelligence services… there is open source intelligence which is available about the scale and scope of what is happening…. when Mr Putin decided to shift heavy armour from Siberia all the way to the Ukrainian border… anyone who understand the logistics of war obviously knew that he was not joking."

Congress leader Manish Tewari, as quoted by The Indian Express.

Further, Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)) general secretary Sitaram Yechury said that the Modi government had sufficient time to evacuate Indians, when Russia gathered its troops on the Ukranian border.

He was further quoted as saying, “Instead, the focus is on propaganda, spin and photo-ops. The government must get its act together and evacuate hapless Indians like it did during the Gulf War."

(With inputs from The Indian Express.)