Recalled envoy cautions students going to Canada, says many returned in body bags after suicide

PTI, Oct 25, 2024, 3:09 PM IST

Indians hoping to study in Canada should think twice because many students have ended up in substandard colleges with no job prospects despite spending lakhs of rupees, resulting in depression and suicide, India’s top envoy there says.

“At one point of time in my tenure, at least two bodies of students were being sent to India in body bags per week,” Sanjay Verma, who served as India’s high commissioner to Canada from 2022, told PTI in an interview this week. Rather than face their parents after failure, “they were committing suicide”.

Verma returned to India earlier this month amid a flaming diplomatic row with Canada over the Khalistani separatist issue.

He and five other diplomats were named “person of interest” by Canada, meaning they were to be interrogated in a murder investigation into the 2023 killing of a Canadian citizen named by India as a Khalistani terrorist. Rather than be subjected to diplomatic ignominy, India recalled Verma and the others on October 19 in what has turned out to be the worst diplomatic row between the two nations.

Verma said he would have given this advice to parents even if relations with Canada were good, saying his heartfelt plea comes from being a father himself.

“They have gone there to dream of a future, and were returning in body bags,” he said in the interview, his first on camera since returning.

Parents should research colleges well before deciding, Verma said, adding that unscrupulous agents are also responsible for the plight of the students who end up in little-known colleges, which conduct maybe one class a week. The students themselves live in cramped dormitories — sometimes sleeping eight in a room.

It is especially painful, he said, because the kids belong to “good families”, and their parents and family members spend a fortune on their education.

“Since, classes are happening once a week, they will study (only) that much and their skill development will be accordingly. After that, say a student finishes higher education in engineering, so I will assume that he will do a job of an engineer. But you will see he is driving a cab, or selling chai and samosa at a shop. So, the ground reality there is not very encouraging,” Verma said.

Asked if parents need to think twice, before sending them to Canada, he said, “Absolutely.” Canada and the United States are the two top destinations for Indians pursuing higher education, many of them choosing the University of Toronto, McGill University, the University of British Columbia or University of Alberta, among others. But Indian students there number in a few hundreds every year. The rest end up in little known campuses.

According to data shared by the Indian government in Parliament early August, as on date, 13,35,878 Indian students are pursuing higher studies abroad in 2024.

In the current year, 4,27,000 of them are studying in Canada and 3,37,630 in the U.S., 8,580 in China, eight in Greece, 900 in Israel, 14 in Pakistan and 2,510 in Ukraine, as per the data.

The envoy underlined that an Indian international student pays four times the fees paid by a Canadian.

“If they are going to spend such an amount, then they should research well (whether) they will get such facilities which they are thinking of. And, this advice, I am giving from day one, and multiple times, I was requesting Canadian authorities too that the future of Indian students may not be toyed with,” he added.

“And, after going there they get stuck. Because the parents of many of them have sold their lands, other properties and possessions… they took loans. Now, that boy or girl, who went to study cannot think of returning, because nothing was left to return to,” resulting in suicides, he said.

Verma said that in the last 18 months he has got many students to record testimonies of their problems on video and post on YouTube.