In Moscow, on October 8, students from India held one-off pickets against corruption at the Tver State Medical University (TSMU). This was reported on Friday, October 9, by the NSN.
According to the representative of foreign students Valery Stotsky, the Indians intend to continue holding pickets at the buildings of their country’s embassy in Moscow, the Investigative Committee (IC) and the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of Russia.
According to him, a fraudulent scheme has been operating in the Tver region for more than 15 years, based on the multiple overestimation of tuition fees at TSMU for students from India. Money from foreign applicants was collected in cash several years in advance. And the training was formal, in which even lagging students were not expelled from the university.
Now students accuse the university administration and local officials of covering up a fraudulent intermediary company – Rus Holdings India Private Limited CJSC for several years.
“We want the head of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, to take personal control of the criminal case in Tver, in which students are treated as victims of fraud,” Stotsky said.
The case has been investigated for almost a year and there is no movement on it. The injured party insists on bringing the case to court, he added.
“We would like the TSMU to conclude not trilateral, but bilateral agreements with the Indians. To stop the intermediary who, attracting foreign students, takes the lion’s share of their money, ”he explained, adding that the intermediary disappeared and allegedly did not transfer funds to the university, while TSMU believes that students did not pay for their studies.
Tensions between foreign students and universities in the Tver region have been going on for many years. In 2016, the Zavolzhsky Court of Tver considered the claim of the Indian Sanjaykumar Shivcharan Gautam against TSMU and Rus Holdings India Private Limited. The subject of the lawsuit was the conclusion of a direct agreement between the student and the university.
“The plaintiff signed an agreement drawn up in Russian, which at that time did not speak, the translator was not present at the time of signing the agreement. Unable to get acquainted with the text of the agreement, the plaintiff did not assume that the agreement was tripartite, ”the claim said.
Tver justice then refused to satisfy the Indian’s demands, they say, it was his own fault for signing, but from the court’s verdict it becomes clear how much foreigners actually paid for studying in Tver.
So, for Gautama and his family, education at the TSMU cost $ 5,000 a year (306 thousand rubles at the average annual rate), while the official cost of training in the specialty “General Medicine”, where the Indian studied, was 85 thousand rubles. The money was received not by the university, but by another gasket, a legal entity – “Rus Education”. In 2019, Gautama was expelled from the fifth year of the TSMU “for academic failure.”
Currently, the Central District Court of Tver is considering a class action lawsuit from Indian citizens studying at the TSMU against the leadership of the university. Third-sixth year students have already been recognized as victims in a criminal fraud case. They were forced to conclude trilateral agreements through the intermediary company Rus Holdings India Private Limited, which inflated the cost of training several times in forged documents.
The university administration still refuses to hand over copies of the signed agreements to the Indians.
In July, Indian students sent an open video message in Russian and English to the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, the Ministry of Health and law enforcement agencies. In it, they accused ex-rector of the university Mikhail Kalinkin and Rus Holdings India Private Limited of using fake websites of the TSMU and falsifying financial documents to conclude trilateral agreements for the provision of paid educational services.
“The university does not communicate with us on this matter, it believes that everything is within the framework of the current legislation. City and regional authorities also do not pay attention, they believe that this is not their area of responsibility, they do not care about students from India and Russia’s reputation in this ugly story, ”Stotsky complained.
It was not possible to get an answer from the administration of the TSMU. Inquiries were sent to the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Education and Science and the government of the Tver region. The regional Ministry of Education replied that medical universities belong to the Ministry of Health.