New Delhi: Canada has recorded 172 Indian student deaths in the last five years, the highest in any foreign country, Minister of State for External Affairs Kirti Vardhan Singh said in the Rajya Sabha Thursday.
A total 632 Indian students died in foreign countries in the last five years. The reasons include accidents or medical reasons and violence or attacks. A total of 18 Indian students have lost their lives in attacks or violent incidents since 2019, according to Singh.
Nine of these 18 Indian students died in Canada, the highest, followed by the US, with six deaths. One student died for the same reasons in China, one in the UK and one in Australia during the same period.
The remaining 614 students have perished due to accidents or medical causes, 163 of them in Canada, again the highest.
The US, the UK and Australia are the next three countries with the highest number of student deaths due to accidents or medical reasons, with 102, 57 and 56 deaths respectively.
According to information Singh provided to the House, there are around 1.33 million Indian students pursuing their higher studies across 108 countries in the world including Pakistan, which is home to 14 students from India.
Canada currently has the highest number of Indians studying abroad, with 4,27,000, while the US is home to 3,37,630 Indian students. The UK is home to around 1,85,000 Indian students, while Australia has 1,22,202 students studying there.
The Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) told ThePrint in a written communication last December that it is extremely “concerned” about the “vulnerability of international students” studying in Canada.
The Canadian government also informed ThePrint that it was taking a number of steps to improve the situation for international students before the start of the 2024-25 academic year, with the goal of addressing the vulnerabilities.
Questions around the safety of Indian students have arisen in Canada in recent months after Ottawa said it is investigating an alleged link between Indian government agents and the killing of Sikh separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar. Nijjar, designated as a terrorist by the Indian government, was gunned down outside a gurdwara in Surrey, British Columbia, on 18 June.
India had called the claims “absurd and motivated”. Diplomatic ties between the two countries have not recovered since. Four Indian nationals were arrested and charged by Canadian authorities for the killing. However, Ottawa is yet to share any evidence of the alleged links between the accused and Indian government officials.
(Edited by Gitanjali Das)
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