Parents of the victims too are afraid to come clean about it because of the stigma attached to drug abuse.
A large number of Indian students, especially from Punjab, have reportedly died of ‘heart attack’ (read drug overdose) in Canada in recent years, but the Indian High Commission in Canada has little data on such deaths, if the details of an RTI reply are anything to go by, reportedindianexpress.com. While there have been media reports of international students dying from drug overdose at an alarming rate, they have failed to set the alarm bells ringing both in Canada and in India. Parents of the victims too are afraid to come clean about it because of the stigma attached to drug abuse.
Giani Narinder Singh of Gurdwara Dukh Nivaran in Surrey has been quoted in a media report as saying, “We have noted that 80% of the deaths of students are related to drugs. Due to stigma, the family members of the deceased often tell people that their wards died of heart attack or in their sleep, when the real reason is from drug overdose.”
RTI activist Harmilap Grewal, who had sought the data related to such deaths from the Indian High Commission in Canada for the period 2017-22, said, “There are reports of such deaths of Punjab students in Canada. But these deaths are not reflected in the RTI reply by the Indian High Commission in Canada. Either the high commission is not keeping the data or it is trying to downplay the deaths.”
Students from Punjab in Canada – Arshdeep Singh Khosa (26), Sukhbir Singh (24), Navreet Singh Manuk, Gurasis Singh, Jatin Puri, Preetinder Singh, and Jagdeep Singh had died due to heart attack in 2022, while Mandeep Singh (24), Sandeep Singh (21), Amarjeet Singh (26), Jobanjeet Singh, and Dharampreet Singh (21) too died of heart attack in 2021. These deaths were reported in the Canadian media. There could be more deaths which may have gone unreported.
Grewal had filed an RTI query demanding to know the number of Indian students who were reported dead in Canada, the US, Russia, China, and New Zealand from 2017 to October 2022.
In reply to the RTI query, the Indian High Commission in Canada said: “As per available records, we have registered 01 death in 2017 and 02 deaths in 2018 of Indian students under consular jurisdiction of HCI, Ottawa. However, there is no information available in respect of Indian state they belonged to.”
The Indian Embassy in the US reported 68 deaths in the first 10 months of 2022 alone. A total 39 Indians died each in 2019 and 2021 in the US. The number of deaths was 20, 17 and 22 in 2017, 2018, and 2020, respectively.
In New Zealand, 43, 51, 49, 20, 31 and 35 Indians died each year from 2017 to 2022, respectively.
Ten Indians died in Russia in 2020, the highest in the last six years. A total of five Indians died in Russia in 2022. The Indian Embassy in China reported only four such deaths in the last six years.
Punjabi news websites are also full of reports of young students dying from heart attack or in accidents in Canada, which is the favourite study destination for students from Punjab
Canada-based non-profit news website ‘Pressprogress’ had published a report – ‘International Students Are Dying From Overdoses at an Alarming Rate. But BC’S (British Columbia) Government Isn’t Tracking the Problem.’ This report had quoted Giani Narinder Singh of Gurdwara Dukh Nivaran in Surrey as saying: “The gurdwara has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to return the bodies of students back home to India to their families. Families often give the power of attorney to the gurdwara because they are unable to afford the funeral costs or to pay for the body to be returned. The gurdwara then receives the coroner’s report which states the cause of death. We have noted that 80% of the deaths are drug related.”
After this report, the BC government had started looking into allegations of deaths due to drug overdose.
Punjabi news websites are also full of reports of young students dying from heart attack or in accidents in Canada, which is the favourite study destination for students from Punjab.
Grewal said, “It is a very serious matter because it involves the lives of young students of Punjab who have gone there for a better future. If the high commission is not having the data or is trying to play down the seriousness of such deaths, then again it’s a matter of serious concern. There is a need to probe the matter. The real data should be shared with the public. Canadian media are reporting that many of the heart attack deaths could be linked to drug overdose. If it is true then parents in India should be made aware of it. The truth of such reports can be investigated only with proper data that ideally should have been with the Indian High Commission.”
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