Naveen Shekharappa Gyanagoudar, a 21-year-old Karnataka student who became the first Indian victim in Ukraine’s ongoing conflict, was a fourth-year MBBS student at Kharkiv National Medical University who died in the conflict for no explanation. When a Russian rocket struck the city’s landmark Freedom Square, Naveen had just come out to buy food and change money.
Naveen came from Chalageri in Karnataka’s Haveri district, the younger son of retired paper mill employee Shekharappa Gyanagoudar and Vijaylakshmi. “We had high hopes for our son.” Shekharappa says, “Those are now shattered.”
He said that his son, who received a 97 percent in his pre-university course, was a gifted student who was compelled to leave the nation due to a “system” that made private higher education institutions financially unaffordable.
I discovered that enrolling him in a private medical college would cost somewhere between Rs 85 lakh and Rs 1 crore. “I chose to send him to Ukraine at that point, but it proved to be significantly more expensive,” Naveen’s father, Shekharappa Gyanagoudar, explained.
Gyanagoudar stated he borrowed money from friends and family to send Naveen to Ukraine to study medicine. Naveen shared an apartment with some friends. Since the battle began, he had been calling home five to six times a day and had relocated to a bunker beneath the flat, according to his relatives.
Naveen had apparently spoken to his father, shortly before going out for groceries and cash, and told him that there was neither food or water left in the bunker he had been hiding in with a few others.
At around 10:00 a.m., Naveen stood in line for meals in Kharkiv, Ukraine (local time). There are different claims on the cause of death, with early reports claiming he died from shelling and later reports claiming he died from Russian troops opening fire.
But, whatever the cause of his death may be, his family will never be able to reclaim him. Their aspirations and wishes will never come true. His parents will never again see their child’s face again.
Not only his family, but the entire country is mourning his death, and every parent can connect with his parents’ pain.
