The alleged suicide of a 20-year-old Nepali student at Odisha’s KIIT University has turned into a potential diplomatic row between Nepal and India. The Nepalese government has expressed serious concern over the incident and said that the matter would not be able to be handled in a justifiable and legal way; otherwise, issuing of No Objection Certificates (NOC) for Nepali students going to study in India will come to a stop.
The deceased was 25 years old and was a third-year B.Tech Computer Science student at KIIT, and his death has been attributed to alleged physical and verbal abuse by a 21-year-old Mechanical Engineering student from the same university. Protests by Nepali students on the KIIT campus have been a result of what has sadly become a tragedy. Uproars continued when reports emerged that university authorities made some of these students evacuate the campus without notice, after which some of the students were forced to evacuate the campus.
Nepal’s Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli noticed the matter further, which gave the situation more traction. The Nepal embassy officials in India’s capital, New Delhi, dilled down promptly and dispatched their diplomatic officials to Nepal’s embassy in Delhi to communicate with local authorities and lend support to the affected students. The Nepali government is clearly taking notice of the country’s lack of control over the safety and welfare of students in Indian educational institutions.
The KIIT administration, in response, termed the incident as “unfortunate” and confirmed that the police had arrested the accused. It also asked protesting Nepali students to go back to campus and resume academic activities. The incident, however, has already sparked diplomatic sensitivities about issues of student safety, bilateral education ties, and accountability of the institutions.
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