[NewIndPress] Musaliar Engineering College students attack hostel

Link to report

Saturday March 29 2008 11:28 IST

Express News Service

PATHANAMTHITTA: Students of the Musaliar Engineering College here resorted to large-scale violence on Friday in the wake of a suicide attempt by Mahesh Chandran, a sixth semester civil engineering student of the college, on the issue of a ragging incident.

The students on hearing the suicide attempt, attacked the hostel, warden’s room, kitchen and the ground floor of the administrative office building.

Window panes, furniture and glass separations were destroyed in the attack. Mahesh Chandran, 21, consumed pills in his hostel room late on Thursday night in the wake of hostel warden and head of civil engineering department Shihabudeen allegedly implicated him in an incident of ragging of a first-year student.

He was rushed to a private hospital here and his condition was stated to be out of danger. Shihabudeen, who was the local guardian of victim of the ragging, summoned Mahesh in the warden’s room and threatened him of filing a complaint naming him in the ragging incident and informed the parents.

Before consuming the drugs, he wrote a suicide note stating that he was innocent and that Shihabudeen wanted to implicate him in the incident.

In the note, he had explained that he wanted to save the victim of ragging, Anu a the first year student. Students’ unions, including SFI, KSU and ABVP, blamed Shihabudeen, who holds the vice-principal charge, for the violent incidents in the college and sought the management to dismiss him immediately from the college.

The unions staged protest marches and dharnas in front of the college gate against the alleged efforts to protect the viceprincipal.