India's stats on student deaths in Canada sit heavily on family of London hit-and-run victim

A 29-year-old man who was killed in a hit and run on Sept. 18, 2022, after coming to London, Ont., is among 172 students from India who have died in Canada over the past five years for a range of reasons, according to the Indian government.

Jibin Benoy is included in Indian Ministry of External Affairs statistics that indicate the number of students from that country who died between 2019 and July 2024 is higher in Canada than anywhere else in the world. 

The deaths in Canada have largely been attributed to natural causes, accidents and medical conditions, with nine described as being "due to attacks."

Benoy was killed cycling home at 4 a.m. from his part-time job at a downtown fast-food restaurant. The second-year international student was enrolled in operations management at Fanshawe College, juggling school and work to make ends meet. 

"I think nobody cares about the life of the students here," said Benoy's brother-in-law, Roshan Mathew, who came from Kerala with Benoy to Ontario to study and now works in Prince Edward Island. "His father and mother, they are still grieving their son's death and I don't think that they can ever recover from that." 

While Benoy's death made headlines, the reasons others died remain a mystery. CBC News made multiple requests to the Indian government for details on cause, location and names of the deceased. 

Source: Indian Ministry of External Affairs

"It's really alarming, concerning and shameful," Adaeze Mbalaja, chair of the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS)-Ontario, said when she learned of the Indian government's numbers for Canada.  

"What we're seeing across the board is the exploitation of international students. Our institutions and our governments, who like to profit off of international students, particularly from South Asian communities, aren't doing enough to stop it." 

While the causes of the deaths are varied, experts who work with international students wonder if the statistics are due to the high number of Indian students studying in Canada. 

More than a million international students came to Canada at the end of 2023, according to the Canadian Bureau for International Education, with 41 per cent of them from India — the highest of any group. Overall, Canada's international student population grew by 63 per cent in the past five years. 

"That number [of international students] is extremely large considering the total size of the population of the country," Toronto immigration lawyer Sergio R. Karas said. "No other country in the Western world has so many foreign students per capita." 

Source: ApplyBoard, Kitchener, Ont.

He added that these foreign students have been arriving as Canada's cost of living is higher than ever amid an affordable housing crisis. International students also pay four times the tuition compared to Canadian students.

Earlier this year, Ottawa put a cap on the number of study permits that colleges and universities are allowed to allocate, recognizing institutional "bad actors" and the impact on the housing market. 

In some cases, students would arrive only to find they've been the victims of fraud and their prospective schools didn't even exist, forcing them to work full time, contrary to the conditions of their study permit. 

Other students who were properly enrolled would often struggle to make ends meet while studying and living in substandard housing. 

"It's a whole web," said Karas. "The program is just too large — it's unmanageable. There are holes you can drive a truck through. The government should declare a moratorium on study permits for at least three years."

'Unethical, inhumane and unacceptable' 

International students are especially vulnerable in Canada, said Ontario MPP Peggy Sattler, the province's official Opposition critic for colleges and universities. 

"The fact that international students from India are coming here and are experiencing such tragedy is absolutely unacceptable," Sattler said, reacting to the Indian government's statistics. 

She said she has met many Indian students who are resorting to using food banks and have been taken advantage of by predatory landlords who know they are unfamiliar with the Residential Tenancies Act.

"It is unethical to draw people to our province and our country with the expectation that they will be able to build a better life for themselves and contribute to our future growth, then to not provide supports that they need when they get here," Sattler said. "It is unethical, it's inhumane and it's unacceptable." 

Meanwhile, Benoy's family is preparing to mark two years since his death with prayers in their community church on Wednesday. His brother-in-law thinks about the life Benoy had hoped to find in Canada when he came here to study from Kerela.  

"My sister, she's just thinking about their past memories," Mathew said of Benoy's widow. "I don't think it will be easy for her to recover, because they loved each other very much." 

In 2023, the London Police Service (LPS) released surveillance images of the suspect vehicle involved in the fatal hit and run. At this time there are no new leads, said LPS, and the investigation remains active and ongoing.