Russia will share with India the findings of the investigation it will like to conduct into the death of Naveen Shekharappa Gyanagoudar, a medical student from Haveri in Karnataka, who was killed in Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine on March 1 last.
Moscow is not convinced by the reports that Gyanagoudar, a fourth-year student of Kharkiv National Medical University, was killed due to shelling by the Russian Armed Forces, which launched a special military operation in Ukraine on February 24 last.
“(The) Russian Armed Forces do not target civilians,” Roman Babushkin, the Deputy Chief of Mission of the Embassy of Russian Federation in New Delhi, told DH. “It is a very unfortunate incident. We are not sure about the circumstances that caused this tragedy.”
“We will be interested in conducting an investigation into the incident and we will be sharing our findings with the Government of India”.
Gyanagoudar went out to buy food and was in a queue in front of a grocery store, when he was killed, purportedly due to an aerial attack targeting a building at the central square in the city.
“Videos which went viral clearly show that a missile came from the western side,” said Babushkin.
The Russian Army was advancing into Kharkiv from the east.
Moscow's deputy envoy to New Delhi alleged that the Ukrainian government had distributed weapons freely, including among the criminals, who had been freed from the prisons. “Among them are racists and neo-Nazis”.
He said that one of the versions about the death of Gyanagoudar was that the 21-year-old Indian had died after being caught in the crossfire.
Gyanagoudar's mortal remains are still in a mortuary in Kharkiv. Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai recently spoke to External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and later quoted him saying that the body of the deceased student had been embalmed and kept at a mortuary in the war-zone of the East European nation. The Embassy of India in Kyiv was in touch with the local mortuary officials, the External Affairs Minister was quoted telling the Chief Minister.
A source in New Delhi said that efforts were on to repatriate the mortal remains of Naveen.
Babushkin also said that Russia would coordinate with the Government of India to do whatever it could do to repatriate the mortal remains of the deceased student.
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