Punishment for ragging in Jadavpur University

The punishments of suspension and fines meted out by the Jadavpur University are stiff and should act as deterrents to those who might nurse ideas of taking it out on new entrants. The Executive Council action came on Wednesday..
AT LAST there has emerged a case of punishing senior students who rag freshers – it has happened in the Jadavpur University, in Kolkata and the Kolkattans would have been rightly proud that they have shown the way once again for others to follow. But, action had been taken by authorities as far back as 2003 against ragging.

The Himachal Pradesh Agricultural University had imposed a fine of Rs 1.25 lakh on a class of the College of Agriculture. According to official sources, students of the first year of the college had complained to the university authorities in July 2003 that they were being harassed by seniors. On the pretext of ragging, they were not being allowed to sleep or move out of the college. On this complaint, vice-chancellor (VC) Tej Partap constituted a fact-finding committee, which found the senior class guilty of the charges.

The committee submitted its report to the VC, who imposed a fine of Rs 1.25 lakh on the students of the senior class. Of the 28 students, 10 students, who were found directly responsible for victimising juniors, were asked to pay Rs 10,000 each. The remaining students were fined Rs 1,000 each.

The punishments of suspension and fines meted out by the Jadavpur University are stiff and should act as deterrents to those who might nurse ideas of taking it out on new entrants. Three students of the architecture department, prime accused of ragging first-year students last year, have been suspended for three semesters, five former students have been fined Rs 20,000 each and twenty other senior students of the department have been fined Rs 5,000 each.

On freshers’ welcome day last July, first-year architecture department students were ragged in their classrooms by a group of department seniors and former students. Outside the classroom, a first-year girl was allegedly abused by a few seniors, who also forced her to chew cigarettes.

The traumatised students lodged a complaint with dean of science who later apprised JU vice-chancellor. The Executive Council action came on Wednesday, six months after the incident.
The university has decided to call the guardians of the accused, censure the students on campus and make them give an undertaking that such an incident will not happen again. They would not lodge any FIR against the accused students but will let them off this time by penalizing them monetarily and also making them give an undertaking. n this connection, other reports of punishing those guilty of ragging are as follows:
• 17/8/2008 - Nine management students at the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) have been penalised for ragging freshers in a varsity hostel, an official of the university. Depending upon their involvement in ragging, fines ranging from Rs.500-2,500 have been slapped on the nine students of the Master of Business Administration course.
• 16/9/2008 - Nine students of Government Dental College, Indore, were suspended for indulging in ragging, official sources said. According to college authorities, seven students of the first year were allegedly ragged by 10 of their seniors.
• 10/11/2008 - Nine students of the National Institute of Technology (NIT) Agartala have been suspended for allegedly ragging juniors. Six students have been admitted to a hospital following the ragging incident.
• 10/1/2009 - Fourteen students at a college in Raipur were suspended by the authorities, a day after the police registered a case against them for ragging their juniors throughout the night.