Crossword Genius

Leading French university admits sheltering the Italian runaways (9)

Ross

I believe the answer is:

fugitives

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'runaways' is the definition.
('fugitive' can be a synonym of 'runaway')

'leading french university admits sheltering the italian' is the wordplay.
'leading' indicates taking the first letters.
'admits' becomes 'gives' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'sheltering' is an insertion indicator.
'the' becomes 't' (the is pronounced as a 't' sound in some dialects).
'italian' becomes 'I' (abbreviation for Italian).
The first letters of 'french university' is 'fu'.
't'+'i'='ti'
'gives' enclosing 'ti' is 'gitives'.
'fu'+'gitives'='FUGITIVES'

Can you help me to learn more?

(Another definition for fugitives that I've seen is " Outlaws".)

I've seen this clue in The Hindu.
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