Malayali MBBS students flee Iran war, face uncertain academic future

Twelve medical students from Kerala were sitting in their dormitory in Kerman, Iran when the unrest that had begun in late December turned into something worse. By late January, their parents had made the decision for them: leave. Ten of them boarded flights on January 22. Two others, Muhammad Shahabas and Sana Koormath Kolothiri, followed in the days after. All twelve were enrolled at Kerman University of Medical Sciences, pursuing five-year MBBS degrees that their families had paid enormous sums to secure. Now they were home, and everything they had planned for was suspended.

Eleven of the students were in their first year. One, Sana, was in her second. They had chosen Kerman partly because it offered quality medical education at lower cost than many alternatives—a calculation that made sense when the region seemed stable. Ayisha Febin, twenty-two years old and the eldest of four children, had scored ninety-five percent on her Plus Two exams and earned a scholarship. Her father, Faizal, a farmer, had still needed to invest roughly thirty lakh rupees from family savings after the scholarship came through. Sana's father, Abdul Nazar, described a similar calculus: Kerman was affordable, the university had a good reputation, and his daughter had the grades to get in. The family had committed to the full five-year program.

What happened next revealed the fragility of that commitment. When internal unrest began on December 28, movement around Kerman became restricted. The university and dormitory imposed curfews, allowing students out only at designated times. When the broader conflict erupted, communication became impossible. Networks went down. Parents in Kerala, frantic with worry, could not reach their children. The Indian embassy and local authorities offered little guidance. Families made the decision themselves: buy the tickets, get them out. The timing was grim—the evacuation coincided with the outbreak of war itself.

Now the students faced a problem that had nothing to do with safety and everything to do with Indian law. The National Medical Commission has strict rules: MBBS students cannot transfer between universities or countries mid-course. The entire program must be completed at a single institution. The course must run at least fifty-four months, excluding internship, and be conducted entirely in English. Graduates must then clear the National Exit Test and complete a mandatory one-year rotating internship in India before they can practice medicine. There is no workaround. There is no alternative pathway. Online education cannot substitute for clinical training. If students complete any portion of their course remotely due to disruption, they must make up the clinical hours in India afterward—a process that could add one to two years to their timeline.

The Kerman University administration sent word in late March that international students should return by April 4. The university itself had not been directly damaged—it sits roughly eleven hundred kilometers from Tehran—and the administration's message seemed to suggest the situation was stabilizing. But for the families, the calculation had shifted. Send their children back into a war zone? Wait and hope the conflict resolved? And if it did resolve, what then? Sana's father put it plainly: even if the immediate danger passed, there was no guarantee it would not escalate again. The risk calculus had become impossible.

Ajith Kolassery, the CEO of NORKA, the Kerala government's overseas development agency, acknowledged that similar situations had arisen during the Russia-Ukraine conflict. In that case, universities in neighboring countries had allowed students who had completed at least three years to transfer. But Iran offered no such option. The regulatory walls were too high. Kolassery noted that if NORKA were approached, it could alert the Indian mission in Iran about the students' situation. So far, no formal request had come.

The families were planning to meet and decide next steps. Some were considering sending a parent representative to Iran to negotiate with university authorities. Others were hoping the Indian government would intervene. But the core problem remained unsolved: twelve students, mid-education, trapped between a conflict zone and a regulatory system that offered no escape hatch. Ayisha, who had dreamed of becoming a doctor and had been comfortable in Iran, now faced complete uncertainty. Her father, who had invested his family's savings, faced the same. The question was no longer whether they could continue their education. It was whether anyone—the university, the Indian government, the NMC—would find a way to let them.