Parents recall fights with SVS college

Chennai: The three girl students who committed suicide by jumping into a well in SVS Naturopathy & yoga medical college near Villupuram on Saturday said in their suicide note that the college had no facilities and that the administration never bothered to give receipts for the money they had paid in the past. The college is run by Vasuki Subramanian, wife of a homeopathy doctor.

The plight of these students was by no means an isolated case. Parents and students had been complaining for a few years now that the institution lacks both faculty and facilities.

“I don’t know how the MGR medical university has been giving recognition to SVS naturopathy & yoga medical college since 2008.

“Only after joining the college did we come to know that the college has no facilities and had violated all the norms. It took a three-year struggle to get the transfer certificate for my daughter,” said father of a student from Chennai who had studied there for three years before shifting to another college this year.

The college never had a cadaver for students to study; nor was there adequate faculty or facilities. The administration basically used the students as workers, was a complaint often heard.  

“The well in which the bodies of the three girls were found too was dig violating norms. Such a big well is not supposed to be in the close vicinity of the building,” pointed out another parent.

Parents and students are reeling out agonising stories on how they were forced to spend lakhs of rupees without getting the promised medical education.

“Even they gobbled up the amount of Rs 25,000 given to my daughter by government as scholarship.

“The government usually distributes the scholarship amount through the institutions in which students are studying. When the cheque given to my daughter from the college was presented to the bank it bounced,” the father of a Dalit student said.