Drug overdose deaths of Punjab students in Canada: High Commission has no data on it, says RTI reply

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.
Apart from heart attacks, deaths due to drowning, suicides, and accidents are also high among international students from Punjab.

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.

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.”