'Rao's letter to Clinton on Tri-Valley students being reviewed'

The letter, written by the Indian ambassador to the United States Nirupama Rao to the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in which she expressed her concern about the Indian students affected by the "sham" Tri-Valley University is being reviewed and would be replied soon, an official spokesperson has said.

"She has, and we are reviewing that letter, and we intend to answer it," the State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland told the media at her daily news conference in Washington.

So as of October 19, of the 1,500 former Tri-Valley University students, 435 were approved to be processed for transfer to other universities, she said, adding that in the remaining cases, the efforts are on.

Acknowledging that this was a "pretty horrible visa scam", where a fake university petitioned and got visas for a bunch of students to come over and then actually turned out to be a fake educational institution, Nuland said that as a result, federal authorities had to close down Tri-Valley University on January 11.

"We have also been working very hard, as we have told Indian authorities to try to find other places in the US for these students who got scammed," she said.

The State Department, she said, issue visas on the basis of documentation that it gets from institutions in the US.

"So when we became aware of this, we turned it over for judicial review, and as I said, this scamming institution has now been closed down by US justice authorities," Nuland said.

Earlier this week, Nirupama Rao in a letter had urged Clinton to view the cases of Indian students affected by the closure of "sham" Tri-Valley University in a "fair and reasonable manner".