Twenty-one-year-old Muskan doesn’t tell her mother everything. She puts on a smile, tries to calm her down, “but every call feels like the last.”
She’d only arrived in Iran from J&K’s Baramulla this year to study MBBS at the Kerman University Of Medical Science, 990 km from the country’s capital Tehran, which is under constant Israeli attack. Today, she is prepared with a bag packed with bare essentials, anxiously waiting for an exit, while the military base next to her dorm is on red alert.
“There is panic in every corner of Kerman. No one knows when we would be killed. The air we breathe feels unsafe,” says Muskan.
Following the Israeli attacks on Iran on June 13, India announced ‘Operation Sindhu’ on Wednesday to evacuate the 4,000 Indians, including around 2,050 students, living in the country. The first cohort of 110 Indian students arrived in Delhi from Armenia early on Thursday.
Among the Indians stranded in Iran are also at least 1,300 Kashmiri students pursuing higher education, many of them like Muskan in medical courses. Limited seats in public colleges and the high fees in private medical institutes in India, along with factors such as affordable living standards, early clinical exposure, and cultural ties, make Iran the top choice for many Kashmiri students looking for medical courses.
But for these students, returning home is the top priority now.
Meanwhile, some students who reached Delhi from Iran on Thursday complained of inadequate transportation facilities. Following a request from the J&K Student’s association, the Chief Minister announced that “the Resident Commissioner has been tasked with coordinating with the JKRTC to ensure proper deluxe buses are arranged.”
We raised the issue of inadequate transportation facilities & the replacement of SRTC buses for Kashmiri students evacuated from Iran with the @CM_JnK. Following this, we were informed by @nasirsogami, CM’s Advisor, that new sleeper buses hv now been arranged. 1/n @ANI @PTI_News pic.twitter.com/am8pl4Z1p0
— J&K Students Association (@JKSTUDENTSASSO) June 19, 2025
The Chief Minister has taken note of the request of the students evacuated from Iran regarding the quality of buses arranged to transport them from Delhi to J&K. The Resident Commissioner has been tasked with coordinating with the JKRTC to ensure proper deluxe buses are arranged.
— Office of Chief Minister, J&K (@CM_JnK) June 19, 2025
‘Packed necessary stuff, students got panic attacks’
“We got a direction from the Indian embassy that we will be evacuated on Wednesday. As advised by them, I, along with other girls in the hostel, packed only necessary stuff: passport, important documents, two pairs of clothes, a pair of shoes, some snacks, a water bottle and some toiletries. We were ready to leave but then buses had to rush to Qom [Iranian city], where there were attacks and students had to be rescued,” said Muskan.
“I got to know about the attack through social media. In Kerman, it was only yesterday that drone tests were done by Iran. Many students in my university have suffered panic attacks, so the university has kept a psychologist in every dorm as a precautionary measure,”she says.
According to her, the evacuation will take a week or more for all students to reach Kashmir, as first, they will be shifted to Mashhad, a city in northeast Iran, from where they will be moved to another country via roads and then to India via flight as the roads are unsafe.
Zain Ul Abidin, a second-year MBBS student at Shiraz University of Medical Sciences in Iran’s Fars province, also from Baramulla, was moved to a hotel in Yazd along with a group of other students at midnight on June 17 after Iranian forces intercepted drone attacks directly over his building.
“The drones were intercepted right above us,” said the student from Baramulla. “We are safe for now, but the fear hasn’t left. No one has been able to sleep properly since the attack began.”
While there’s no official statement from the Indian embassy on their evacuation, students have been told it could happen within the next 48 hours.
‘Parents more afraid than me’
As evacuation plans slowly unfold, many remain in limbo – cut off from family, classrooms, and any sense of stability.
Internet access remains erratic. Since June 13, filters and signal disruptions have made even basic communication a challenge. “I manage to speak to my parents on Google Meet three times a day. They’re more afraid than we are, constantly checking in,” said Zain.
Zain had chosen Iran for its affordability and cultural familiarity. But with the semester disrupted and the future unclear, he now finds himself unsure whether he’ll ever complete his medical degree.
Meanwhile, in Tehran, the most heavily targeted city due to its political and nuclear significance, students are already being moved out. Newslaundry reached out to four Kashmiri students stranded there, but most were unable to speak at length due to weak signals and constant movement.
A student from Sopore studying at a medical college in Tehran, who did not wish to be named, said: “We are not in a condition to answer any question. The situation is extremely dangerous and we are being evacuated. There’s a constant sound of drones, maybe bombs. We just want to get out. It feels like we’re leaving behind a home that once sheltered us.”
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