Kerala seems to be in the limelight of notoriety when it comes to ragging. First, there was the instance of a polytechnic student being ragged so badly that it ended up harming his kidneys. Now, it has emerged that 21 students of a medical college in the state have been suspended following ragging allegations from their juniors.
According to an NDTV report, three professors from the college are working with the police to establish the veracity of the allegations by around 40 first-year students stating that they were forced to take off their clothes and then clean toilets. The accused will remain suspended until this probe ends. They could be rusticated if the probe finds them guilty.
The incident comes close on the heels of the one where a first-year polytechnic student was forced to consume alcohol and perform rigorous exercise. All nine people accused in the case have since been suspended by the college, and five of them have even surrendered before the police.
Problem across the country
However, the menace of ragging seems to be endemic all across the country, despite stringent steps taken to check it, such as the rustication of those found guilty of ragging their juniors. According to a Free Press Journal report, students at the Index Medical College and Research Centre were reinstated after their suspension was lifted when allegations of ragging against them were retracted back and they apologised.
A few days earlier, the Telegraph reported that three postgraduate students from Birsa Agricultural University in Jharkhand had been expelled for ragging a first-year student for 12 hours straight. The victim, who had joined the institute only a couple of weeks before the incident, was thrashed and had his head shaved by his seniors, who later forced him to write that he had been subjected to this treatment because he had verbally abused them.
