[Newstrack] Retribution gets harsh….A student ragged and thrown down from fourth floor of a hostel in Agra

Link to report

By Binita Tiwari
New Delhi

Oct 04: The reports of several abuses in the shadow of ragging are clogging our ear…

Abdul Wahab becomes another victim of ragging as he refused to pay Rs 2000 to his seniors for drinking. The seniors threw him from the fourth floor of college hostel in Agra. Wahab ended up injuring his legs and spinal cords and was rushed to hospital by his friends.

The incident occurred on the unfortunate night of Monday October 01, 2007 when Abdul was studying in his room at the third floor of his hostel and suddenly some seniors entered in his room and started harassing him and asked Rs 2000, if Abdul wanted to remain in the college.

Abdul refused to pay as a result he was thrashed and then dragged to fourth floor from where he was pushed down.

The victim is a second year BTech student of Anand Engineering College; he was taken to Kamyani hospital in Agra.

The victims’ father has alleged that his son has complaint several time of being harassed by the senior students for past few days.

The victim’s father at Sikandra police station has lodged an FIR on Wednesday after the police intervention.

The college authority had told Wahab’s parents not to report the matter to police, as it would ruin the victims’ career if an FIR had been filed.

The college administration has refused to take the incident as a matter of ragging but have constituted to probe the incident.

Dean of the College J S Yadav tried to hide the matter and cited that personal enmity could have led this incident. But he promised to punish the culprits.

Meanwhile the police investigation team is waiting for Abdul’s recovery to record his statement.

Doctors in the hospital are yet to know the extent of his injury.

Ragging a growing menace…

Victimisations had not stopped by the perpetrators of these crimes who feel that they have got all the legal documents and abused juniors in the name of raging.

Recently a student of engineering college in Lucknow was taken to psychiatric centre after ragging left him traumatised. The symptoms were found to be the case of psychosis.

In another incident a student committed suicide after getting harassed by seniors.

There are many such cases, which go unreported.

A committee headed by former CBI director R.K Raghvan reached out to a conclusion and recommended that the primary responsibility for curbing ragging lies with the academic institution.

The committee mentioned the adverse impacts of ragging on higher education, and perceived ragging as failure to inculcate human values from the schooling stage, and suggested punishment to deter its recurrence.

R K Raghavan had also drawn a social profile of the victims and found that most of the ragging victims were either from rural areas or socially backward communities.

A social group, Coalition to Uproot Ragging from Education (CURE) had reported 52 cases and 6 suicidal cases since the May 2007 Supreme Court’s directive to take appropriate measures to curb ragging.

The present laws should be modified to tackle and discouraged ragging in any form but the ragging still seems to go unchecked ….

Presently, anti-ragging measures are limited to provisions in the Indian Penal Code, the Code of Criminal Procedure and Government orders.

Ragging that means to break the ice between freshers and seniors in academic institution has taken an ugly turn in due course of time…

It is becoming too late…for if this format of ragging continues; there will be phobia among students and parents to send their children for higher studies.