SVS college was in legal tangle a year before girls' death

CHENNAI: At least a year before finding itself in the news for all the wrong reasons after the shocking death of three girl students, whose bodies were fished out of a farm well in Villupuram district on January 21, SVS Medical College of Yoga and Naturopathy escaped almost unscathed in two rounds of litigation in the Madras high court.
It has now come to light that poor facilities, high fees and unacademic atmosphere were all discussed in the high court and yet the college escaped closure, as a division bench said the survival of the institution depended on the satisfaction of the Tamil Nadu Dr MGR Medical University .Any interference by the court would amount to acting as the appellate authority , which the court was not inclined to do, said a division bench of Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice T S Sivagnanam on June 22, 2015.S Arivazhagan, Villupuram district secretary o the CPM-affiliated Students Federation of India (SFI), had filed a PIL in 2014 for a court direction to Tamil Nadu Dr MGR Medical University to cancel the affiliation of SVS college and derecognise it. He had also prayed for a direction to the Central Council for Research in Yoga and Naturo pathy (CCRYN) under the Health Ministry to cancel the approval for the college to offer Bachelor of Naturopathy and Yoga Sciences course.