External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said the welfare of Indian students abroad is one of the foremost priorities for the government.
New Delhi: The recent death of 19-year-old Shreyas Reddy Benigeri, a student of Indian origin in Ohio has put the focus back on the security and safety of Indian and Indian-origin students at and around the campus. Every year, a significant number of Indian students venture beyond their homeland in pursuit of academic excellence and global exposure. However, amidst aspirations and dreams, some instances cast a shadow on this journey, where some find themselves caught in unfortunate circumstances leading to untimely and heartbreaking deaths. A total of 403 incidents of death of Indian students abroad have been reported since 2018 due to various reasons including natural causes, accidents, and medical conditions with Canada topping the list with 91 cases followed by 48 in the UK, the government informed Lok Sabha Friday.
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said the welfare of Indian students abroad is one of the foremost priorities for the government. “As per the information available with the ministry, 403 incidents of death of Indian students abroad have been reported since 2018 due to various reasons including natural causes, accidents and medical conditions, “External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar was quoted as saying by news agency PTI. Jaishankar was replying to a question on the safety of Indian students abroad. “Indian missions/posts abroad respond to any issues faced by Indian students on priority basis,” he further added. The External Affairs Minister provided the country-wise details of the deaths of Indian students abroad since 2018. Check the chart below.
Check country-wise details of the deaths of Indian students abroad since 2018.
According to the data, 91 Indian students died in Canada, 48 in the UK, 40 in Russia, 36 in the US, 35 in Australia, 21 in Ukraine, and 20 in Germany.
As per the statistics, 14 Indian students died in Cyprus, 10 each in the Philippines and Italy, and nine each in Qatar, China, and Kyrgyzstan.
From Varun Chheda to Neel Acharya – the Purdue deaths that shook Indians
The death of Shreyas Reddy Benigeri comes just days after Neel Acharya, an Indian-origin student pursuing a double major at the prestigious Purdue University, was found dead near the varsity airport. Earlier, 25-year-old Indian student Vivek Saini was fatally attacked in Georgia state’s Lithonia city by a homeless drug addict. Another Indian-American student, 18-year-old Akul B Dhawan at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign was found dead last month with signs of hypothermia. Dhawan reportedly went missing in the early hours of January 20 and was found dead almost 10 hours later on the back porch of a building near the university campus in west Urbana in the US state of Illinois. In October 2022, 20-year-old data science student Varun Manish Chheda was gaming and chatting online with friends when he was stabbed to death inside his first-floor McCutcheon Hall room on Purdue University’s West Lafayette campus.
Just a year and a week after Varun Manish Chheda’s death, 25-year-old Tanya Roy and her twin sister Rayna Roy died after falling from their seventh-floor apartment around the Purdue campus on October 11, 2023. While there was no record of Rayna as a Purdue student, Tanya graduated with a bachelor of science degree in environmental and ecological engineering in 2020 from the university and was a recipient of the Presidential Scholarship in 2019.