Ravi Kumar, 22, a civil services aspirant who reached home in Bhuli on Sunday from Delhi, said he’d never seen anything like it.

Ravi could reach home by New Delhi Sealdah Rajdhani Express because he had booked his tickets way before the scare. “This was a planned trip, I’d booked the ticket in winter,” he said. “Thousands of outstation students like me are stranded in Delhi, not getting tickets for trains or planes,” said the youth who stays in a private hostel in Delhi to prepare for civil services exam.

The son of a BCCL employee and a government school teacher, Ravi decided to self-quarantine immediately after reaching home.

The youth boarded the train around 4.15pm on Saturday at New Delhi after hiring a cab as public transport was scarce.

“It struck me that during the journey everybody was scared and majority of my fellow passengers wore masks and avoided talking to each other,” he said.

“All the intermediate stations like Kanpur Central, Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyay Junction and Gaya Junction where the train stopped during the 14-hour journey en route to Dhanbad around 6.23am, things were quiet. Passengers even resisted the entry of mediapersons in the train’s coaches when they wanted to take interviews,” he said. “It was the strangest journey home.”

Reaching Dhanbad, he reserved a taxi at Rs 150 to reach Bhuli within 25 minutes. All mandatory tests such as the thermal scanning of passengers were carried out at the station by railway authorities.“Hostels are shut and messes have been vacated,” he told The Telegraph over phone. “I am lucky that I had a ticket. Due to the huge rush many of my friends could not return to their hometowns. Flight ticket rates are so high that it is beyond the reach of many. It’s a bad scene.”

Ravi added that he stayed in Delhi’s Old Rajendra Nagar Area. “I cleared the UPSC Mains and I thought I had a good chance of making it this time. I was preparing hard for my interview with mock sessions. Life was good. But who knew something like this (the novel coronavirus pandemic) would happen?” he said.

He said the situation worsened in the national capital these past two weeks.

“In student areas like Mukherjee Nagar, Patel Chest, Nirankari Colony among others, the situation grew desperate when coaching institutions and hostels closed down since more than a fortnight,” he said.

“Outstation students had to leave, so there was a lot of panic regarding tickets, and failing that, a scramble for alternative places to stay,” he said. “We also heard a lot of stories of how an uncle and aunt in my neighbourhood at Old Rajendra Nagar had been forcibly taken to the hospital by health workers who thought the couple was infected,” the youth said.

He said this was a never situation in the country.

“Never before in India have we faced such a situation,” he said.

“As someone who wants to serve the country, I can only appeal to fellow Indians to observe every precaution such as social distancing, wearing masks and washing hands frequently, so that we can avoid the spread of the virus,” he said.