New Delhi, Feb 1 (IANS) With the radio tagging of Indian students duped by a fake university in San Francisco triggering outrage in India, External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna Tuesday said New Delhi will ask Washington how such a ‘dubious’ institute was allowed to function.
‘We will be taking it up with the educational authorities in the US as how it allowed the university to function, how it was allowed to dupe gullible Indian students,’ Krishna said, terming the Tri-Valley University as ‘dubious’.
Krishna, however, sought to cool the tempers in India, saying the matter related to only ’12 to 18 students’ out of 108,000 Indian students studying in the US.
‘Well, let us understand one thing. There are about 1.8 lakh Indian students in the United States of America. And we are now talking about these 12 or 18 students who have been subjected to this treatment,’ Krishna said when asked about the tagging of Indian students.
‘I would appeal to the people of the country, and to the media in particular, that we should look at it in the larger perspective of these one lakh and odd Indian students who are pursuing their studies in various universities,’ he said.
Some 1,555 students of Tri-Valley University, 90 percent of them from India and mostly from Andhra Pradesh, face the prospect of deportation following the closure of the Pleasanton-based university on charges of selling student visas.
Earlier, Krishna strongly condemned the radio tagging of Indian students. The practice was ‘inhuman’, he said and demanded that the US government ‘initiate severe action against those officials responsible for this inhuman act’.
‘Indian students are not criminals. The radio collars should immediately be removed,’ Krishna said in Bangalore Sunday.
The US has, however, vigorously defended the radio tagging of Indian students, saying the practice was a ‘standard procedure’ for a variety of investigations.
‘Use of ankle monitors is widespread across the United States and standard procedure for a variety of investigations, and does not necessarily imply guilt or suspicion of criminal activity,’ the US embassy here said in a statement Monday.
