Indian students appeal against deportation order

Four Indian students have denied breaching their visa conditions and are contesting a deportation order after being arrested on Friday over allegations they failed to attend school.

The students filed their appeal yesterday with the Immigration Appeals Board and are expected to file an application for bail this morning.

An official from the Indian High Commission in Tripoli is expected to arrive in Malta today to oversee the case.

Another four Indian students who were also arrested by the police did not appeal and will be flying back home in the coming days.

The students were charged on two counts: not having enough money to sustain themselves and breaching their student visa conditions by failing to attend school.

They are denying both charges. A spokesman for the students claimed they received regular payments from their families in India apart from having money in the bank.

Five of the students who attended the SSM, a logistics and management school in Ħamrun, also contested the charge of failing to attend school insisting there were serious shortcomings in the educational service they were given.

"They did not receive the service for which they paid good money. They are insisting the shortcomings be ironed out because they want to return to India with the certificate of study they set out to achieve in the first place," the spokesman said.

SSM director Alexander Borg had said he was in duty bound to report the students to the police when they failed to turn up at school.

"When a visa is issued to students I am responsible for them. We verbally warned them more than once and then got them to sign an agreement that they will attend school regularly. When they continued to absent themselves we were left with no option but to report them to the police," he said, insisting the school would not be accepting them back.

Parents of the students were very worried about the fate of their children when speaking to The Times on Monday. They said they had only heard from their children for five minutes since their mobile phones were confiscated by the police.

The parents contested the police action: "Our children are not terrorists. They are legally in Malta".

The Indian students were in Malta with legally-issued student visas to study logistics and management. The course runs for a full academic year and the students paid thousands of euro in tuition fees.

Regular school attendance is a condition imposed on student visas.