Thursday, September 17, 2009

UP Autonomous College students barge into hostel, thrash juniors

TNN 16 September 2009, 09:16pm IST

VARANASI: The ugliest face of ragging was revealed on the campus of the UP Autonomous College on Wednesday when senior students attacked the hostel of junior students and brutally assaulted more than 35 first-year students. They were teaching the juniors a lesson for having complained against them. Two students were arrested while search for other students was on.

It may be mentioned here that the college accommodates its BSc first year students in the Third Hostel while the BSs final year students are put up at the New Hostel. The first-year students had alleged that their seniors had been harassing them for the past many days. They had even complaint to the college authorities. This act of juniors irked the final year students and they attacked the Third Hostel on Wednesday afternoon in a large number.

They ransacked the hostel, damaging doors, furniture and destroying books and food articles of the inmates. They then attacked juniors with sticks and broken furniture. Over 35 students, including Abhishek, Gaurav, Vivek Singh, Rupesh, Sarvesh, Shiv Prakash, Shrikant, Shrawan Shukla, Narain Pandey, Ajit and Suryakant, sustained serious injuries on head and face. However, while the hooligans created havoc, wardens remained mere spectators.

It was only when principal Sabha Shankar Tiwari was informed, he arrived there with heavy police force. Seeing the police, the assailants fled from the scene but returned to attack the juniors. Finally, police used force to save the junior students. The principal rushed the injured students to Deen Dayal Hospital for proper treatment. Heavy police force was deployed on the campus.

When the principal was contacted, he claimed he had assumed charge only recently. He had dissolved the old proctorial board and anti-ragging committees of the college. He said the new proctorial board was constituted on Tuesday while the process to form a new anti-ragging committee was in progress. He admitted that ragging of freshers by the senior students had come to light and many complaints of new students were being investigated.

He said he also had formed a committee to probe into the Wednesday's incident. He said many assailants had been identified while the process of identification of other students was on. He said all the guilty students would be expelled from the college after investigation. Two assailants had been arrested by the police till the filing of this report while identification and search of identified assailants was on.

Meanwhile, IG Range Gurdarshan Singh, district magistrate AK Upadhyaya and DIG PC Meena also visited the college to take stock of the situation. They held meetings with the authorities and office-bearers of the institution. The DM told secretary of college management RP Singh that the issue of ragging could not be taken lightly. He instructed the college authorities to detect all the assailants for legal action.

The officials assured the college administration of all help to check ragging and recurrence of such incidents. The DM told TOI that college administration had assured that no guilty student would be spared. He said the arrests had started.

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