Medical student suspended for ragging

Jaipur, Jan 3 (IANS) A senior medical college student was suspended in Rajasthan after some junior students accused him and his friends of ragging, an official said Tuesday.

The alleged ragging took place in Jhalawar Medical College late Monday.

“Some fourth year MBBS students have been accused of harassing seven junior students in the college hostel,” a college official told IANS.

The junior students alleged that they were asked to follow some commands and were beaten up when some of them refused to do so.

“They say that they were even slapped and made to stand out in the open in the cold night,” said the official.

He added that a student, Amrit Meena, has been suspended. “An enquiry against other senior students has been taken up by the college’s disciplinary committee,” said the official.

Cases of ragging at educational institutes in Rajasthan come up from time to time despite strict Supreme Court directives against the practice.

Last September, criminal cases were slapped against five students of Mohanlal Sukhadia University in Udaipur after a first-year Bachelor of Science student went into depression after he was ragged.

In the same month, 16 students were booked for ragging an engineering student in Jodhpur’s Jai Narain Vyas University. In another ragging case on Sep 8, a 19-year-old girl was allegedly ragged by her seniors at a private engineering college at Bhankrota in Jaipur.
This caused her to fall from the fourth floor of her college hostel and she died in SMS Hospital in Jaipur.

Keeping in view the increasing number of ragging incidents in Rajasthan, some universities have made it mandatory for all the students to sign an affidavit during admissions stating that they would not indulge in any ragging-related activities.

Acting on Supreme Court directives, some higher education institutions have equipped themselves with CCTV cameras and asked the student counsellors to check ragging activities. However, many colleges have failed to comply with the norms.