[TheCheers] College students in J-K protest ragging

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Jammu, Dec 7 (ANI): Students belonging to the Jammu University took out a protest rally here on Thursday against ragging.

They shouted slogans against the hostel authorities for not ensuring their safety and security.

The students were protesting against the ragging of some Muslim students by their seniors belonging to Hindu community. They alleged of being beaten up by their seniors.

"There was a group of boys who were drunk and were creating the chaos. Some of them were also outsiders. We were sitting inside our room, when suddenly some boys came and forced us to open the door of our room. Once inside, they started beating us. When we tried to defend ourselves, they took out sharp weapons with which they threatened us. One of them also threatened to shave of my beard," said Mohammed Aslam, a student.

Ragging has long been an issue of debate in educational institutions, forcing the Central Government to enforce strict anti-ragging laws in universities and colleges. (ANI)

[ToI] 4 Angrau students held for 'ragging'

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HYDERABAD: Four students of Acharya N G Ranga Agricultural University were arrested for stripping a student and beating up another during a party.

Three students—Padma Rao (B Sc I year), J Rajesh (B Sc III year) and B Ajay Prasad (B Sc III year) were arrested on Monday and G Karunakar (B Sc I year) was arrested on Tuesday by the Rajendranagar police following a complaint by the victims and a case registered under the Andhra Pradesh Prohibition of Ragging Act, section 4(3). If convicted, the culprits can get two years imprisonment with a fine of Rs 2000.

According to Rajendranagar police, the incident occurred as part of a birthday party which was organised by Padma Rao on late Sunday evening at Hostel B, Krishi Nilayam. The party which began in the midnight was attended by more than 10 students. Early in the morning liquor was allegedly served in plenty. At 2 am Padma Rao, along with three other friends —G Karuna, J Rajesh, B Ajay Prasad—, went out to have ‘more fun’.

They allegedly summoned two students of third year horticulture to a hall in the middle of the hostel and stripped one of them and beat the other student and also showered abuses on them. Even as the students allegedly protested, they were made to wait in the hall for 15 minutes and then allowed to go. The incident came to light when the victims gave a written complaint to the Rajendranagar police station. Police arrested all the four students.

The university authorities, however, have not taken any action against the accused student saying that it is not clear whether it was an act of ragging. The university authorities said that since all the accused students were either from the I or III year, and the victims were from III year, the incident cannot be categorised as an act of ragging.

"It cannot be categorised as ragging also because the academic year had begun much earlier and the freshers’ day got over in November first week. But action will be taken once we find out what really happened," registrar, D Jagannadha Raju told TOI. The university has formed a committee to look into the incident. Any action on the accused will depend upon the findings of the committee.

But the police maintained that the act was punishable under the Ragging Act as the accused were ‘seniors’ as they have been the residents of the university for four years. All the four accused had stayed in the university for a longer period of time as they had failed more than a couple of times and were known as seniors in the university.

[ToI] Students booked for ragging

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LUCKNOW: The Lucknow University authorities on Tuesday lodged FIR against four students and put them under suspension for their alleged involvement in a ragging incident. An inquiry has also been constituted on the written complaint of junior students.

According to proctor AN Singh, the four BA II students suspended are Mani Singh, Mritunjay Singh, Prem Singh and Bhanu Pratap. The complaint was lodged by four BA I students Jai Prakash, Sunit, Shrawan and Avinash Verma in which they have accused seniors of harassing juniors in the name of ragging.

Juniors have alleged that seniors used to assign them work with the threat that those who failing to do their assignments will be made to urinate on heaters or singed with a cigarette buts. Juniors also complained that seniors use abusive language against them.

Both the accused and the complainants are residents of Acharya Narendra Dev (AND) hostel. The alleged ragging sessions used to take place in room number 110 and 125 of the hostel. LU authorities are verifying the claims of the complainants as the latter have not been able to produce any evidence to support their allegations.

The Proctor told the TOI that as per the directions of the Supreme Court we have lodged an FIR and suspended the students against whom charges of ragging have been levelled. But we are also verifying the veracity of the charges to ensure that innocents do not get punished, he said. If found guilty, these seniors will be expelled from the university, he added.

Meanwhile, proctorial board members took rounds of various hostels and asked the junior students to report any incident of ragging without fail. Juniors were also told not be afraid of seniors. Prof Nishi Pandey, dean student welfare, assured students that university will provide them full protection.

The incident of ragging had come to light on Monday when some junior students created ruckus at the AND hostel claiming that some day scholars along with senior hostlers were subjecting juniors to ragging. University authorities raided several hostels following complaint but could find nothing. However, an identification was done on Tuesday on the basis of the complaint lodged by the juniors.

[CNN-IBN] Maya out to tackle ragging, brings tough law

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New Delhi: The Mayawati Government in Uttar Pradesh approved a bill on Monday paving the way for a total ban on ragging in all educational institutions in the state.

The bill envisages expulsion, two years' prison terms and fines up to Rs 10,000 for offenders, UP Cabinet Secretary Shashank Shekhar Singh said.

The draft Ragging in Educational Institutions Bill 2007 was approved in a Cabinet meeting, which was chaired by Chief Minister Mayawati.

According to the Cabinet Secretary, the proposed law permits students expelled from institutions on ragging charges to appeal within 30 days before a commissioner, whose decision in the matter would be final.

The bill also provides that in case of written complaints by students, their parents or guardians and teachers, the head of the educational institution should probe the charges within a week.

The provision holds that the institution head should expel the offenders, if found guilty, within a week and file a complaint with the area police station.

The government initiated the mover following concerns over numerous incidents of ragging across the state in the past few months in places like Gorakhpur, Greater Noida and Gorakhpur.

Six students were expelled from Apeejay Institute of Technology in Greater Noida in October on ragging charges while an 18-year-old student of Madan Mohan Malviya Engineering College in Gorakhpur committed suicide in September this year after allegedly being tortured by his seniors.

(With agency reports)

[ToI] Ragging menace still raging

This report appeared on Page 3 of the ToI, Delhi edition on Dec 03, 2007

Raghavan Wants ‘Proactive’ Action Against Offending Colleges

Sonia Sarkar | TNN

New Delhi: Six months after the Supreme Court passed an interim order asking for implementation of R K Raghavan committee’s recommendations to stop ragging on campuses, nothing much has been done to curb the menace. Showing their displeasure at the snail-paced progress done on this front, panel members and chairman Raghavan, in a recent meeting, asked various affiliating bodies — University Grants Commission (UGC), All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and Medical Council of India (MCI) — to take ‘‘proactive’’ action against institutes which don’t comply with the panel’srecommendations.

The committee, which met for the first time after the interim order was passed in May, was not satisfied with the attitude of the affiliating bodies. ‘‘Not enough action was taken by the affiliating bodies against the educational institutes which didn’t implement the recommendations. They were asked to be a little proactive on this,’’ said a committee member. The court had stated that these affiliating agencies have the right to stop funding to institutes, who don’t implement the Raghavan committee recommendations. A document prepared by CURE, an NGO, stating media reports on 70 such cases, was also presented in the meeting.

Though Raghavan was reticent when asked if the committee acted tough on the affiliating bodies, he told Times City: ‘‘We had recommended in the report what we had to. There is nothing further we can do on this. We have asked UGC, MCI and AICTE to monitor the situation in their respective institutes, for which, we will do a follow-up later.’’

These bodies had submitted action taken reports to the committee, which forwarded the same to the MHRD. But the report may not be depicting the true picture as for say, UGC in its report hasn’t even stated the recent incident at St Stephen’s, where one first-year student got burn injuries on his knees and hands after four of his seniors allegedly sprayed deodorant on him and lit a match stick. Though the authorities suspended the culprits for one year from the college and for a month from the hostel, they tried to hush up the matter calling it just a ‘‘prank’’ and ‘‘irresponsible’’ behaviour on part of a few students.

After the media reported the incident in the first week of October, UGC asked for an explanation from the college on the matter to which the latter hasn’t replied yet. ‘‘We haven’t got any reply from the college as yet,’’ said R K Chauhan, additional secretary, UGC, who attended the meeting.

Asked why they have ignored this incident in the action taken report, Chauhan said: ‘‘We cannot state the incidents institution wise. In our report, we have stated that almost 95% of the institutes have followed the recommendations. We have initiated action wherever it was required.’’

As per the Raghavan committee, an FIR has to be lodged in case of ragging, but interestingly, no FIR was lodged in the St Stephen’s case. Nandita Narain, the college dean (residence) said: ‘‘It was a prank and college has taken appropriate action against the students.’’ Asked about the delay in the reply, she said: ‘‘We have already given an explanation to the university, since it had asked for it. The university proctor should be forwarding it to the UGC.’’ Proctor Gurmeet Singh, however, was not available for comment.

The action taken reports submitted by the affiliating bodies will be produced before the court in its next hearing likely to be scheduled for December 4.

[ToI] The 'R' Word

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Let's start with a confession. “When I joined a boarding school, I was thrown into a completely different world, one that existed far beyond the realms of my confined existence. I was exposed to the perils and wonders of being in an all boy boarding school. In the first week, the seniors confronted the first-year students in the common rooms and as was the custom, one by one we were supposed to come to the center of the gathering, stand upon the trusted wood table that had withstood the weight of generations of schoolboys and speak to the rest. This was 'Intro', a ritual that inducted all first-years into the school, albeit of course from the prying eyes of the authorities.

I nervously awaited my turn as I saw my classmates go up one by one, where they were asked questions ranging from 'What is your name and where do you come from to how old is your sister? All were asked to sing. On my turn, I was able to answer all questions well, and was even spared the usual slaughter owing to that fact that I had a brother instead of a sister. When it came to singing, I was a nervous wreck because I had never sung before, not even in the bathroom. But when I began, I even surprised myself. I realised I could sing just as well as any other. I held the audience captive, discovered a new talent and made myself known amongst the seniors. I even finished off a fine performance with a joke that had my audience in splits. Not only did it help me become a recognised face and won me many friends amongst the seniors, but six years later I went on to become the school music captain,” confesses Agrim Joshi, whose first brush with the term ragging turned out to be a pleasant one.

World over, freshers or first-years at colleges and boarding schools are subjected to some form of ragging, ranging from asking simple questions, to dancing and singing for an audience, professing love to an unsuspecting victim to downright 'servantry' of their seniors. While there are many colleges that deny the existence of this dreaded practice on their campuses, fact remains that most of us do face it in some form or the other during our formative years. Why do students indulge in this practice and what good could possibly come of it?

“It is a good way to get to know your juniors better. Since you will be spending the better part of your school life with them, and sometime, it may involve working together as a group, it is for the best if the ice is broken between both parties. Besides, in a close knit environment such as a boarding school or a hostel, you can't expect people to be mere acquaintances at a superficial level,” says boarding school student, Pranav Kapur. Raghav Puri mirrors this view when talking about a college environment, “Seniors are your best guide to survival in college. They know all about the course, teachers, things that could get you into trouble etc. It helps to have cordial relations with them, and if that involves a little bit of singing and dancing for harmless fun, then so be it.”
While those of us who study in high-end colleges may agree with this view, by no means do we have the right to judge the dilemma of an engineering or medical student. Here, the term ragging is practiced in its worst form.
Often there are reports of students beaten up by seniors, abused over long periods of time, made to carry out menial errands, all under the pretext of ragging.

One could argue that this stems from the high amount of stress that these students go through in the daily course of their academia, and ragging juniors is a way to vent some of that frustration.

“Being a first-year student in a medical college is hell. We are made to do all sorts of things. You are treated like sub-humans, and it's almost as if the only purpose of your existence is to serve your seniors,” says Arpit Verma, a first-year student at a reputed medical college.

Colleges have begun to take the issue of ragging seriously and have implemented certain counter measures such as severe punishments for those found indulging in the practice, counseling sessions and anti-ragging squads. But in many cases this is not enough.

The solution lies in going into the roots of the problem. It is human tendency to want to dominate over those we consider inferior, and in a college mindset, the senior-junior difference is more distinct, leading the seniors into believing that juniors are there to be ordered around.

The ridiculous practice of calling your seniors 'Sir' is a good example of the dominating mindset of these students. Efforts should be made to eradicate this mentality and re-enforce the point that age difference is no reason to subvert those younger than you. If this is not done, ragging, ideally a harmless way to get to know each other better, may spiral into something much worse than what it already is.

[Hindu] Ragging victim complains of denial of justice

One of our readers, Shri N R Ravisankar, sends us this report from The Hindu

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K. Santhosh

Thrissur: Manu, victim in a ragging case at Kerala Agricultural University’s (KAU) College of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, on Wednesday said he had been denied justice as the arrest of the accused had been delayed.

On October 23, the police had registered a case against five students for allegedly ragging Manu, a first year student. He had attempted suicide by slashing his wrist after the incident, the police said. He later identified the accused,- Berin P. Varghese, M.R. Arun Raj, Abin B. Mathews, R. Asim and Ajaz Mohammed, from photos in college records.

“I want justice. Even a month after registration of the case, the accused have not been arrested,” Mr. Manu told The Hindu over phone from his home in Neyyattinkara.

The accused were booked under Section 4 of the Kerala Prohibition of Ragging Act, 1998 (punishable by imprisonment up to two years), and sections 306 (abetment to commit suicide), 294 (obscene acts) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code. The Sessions court had dismissed anticipatory bail petitions filed by them.

Manu was discharged from hospital on Wednesday.

“I was not well. I could not handle the stress. I had stomach ailments and nausea. I am better now. I plan to attend classes from Monday. I hope everything will be smooth. My class-mates are caring,” he said.

He said he did not hate anyone, but was pained over his experiences as a fresher . "This should not happen to anyone else in the State. More students should not suffer. This case should highlight the evils of ragging and effect a change on campuses,” Mr. Manu said.