Bangalore college student alleges ragging, college suspends him

Bangalore: Ragging has reared its ugly head once again and this time it is in tech hub Bangalore. A first year B.Com student has lodged a police complaint after allegedly being beaten up and attacked with weapons by four of his seniors at the prominent Dayanand Sagar college in south Bangalore. The college has suspended him as well as his seniors accused of ragging, pending an inquiry.

Siddarth Kumar Singh, the victim, has said in his complaint that four of his seniors first asked him to cut his hair in early August. He refused and tried to persuade them to stop bullying him. However, they later asked him to go to their house and dance for them. A few days later he was allegedly forced to go to their house and take off his clothes and dance for them. He ran away and spoke to his brothers about the incident. He alleged that the seniors threatened him that they would harass his brothers studying in the same college too, and thus he kept quiet. He stayed off college for a couple of days too.

In his complaint, Siddarth has said that he was attacked by the seniors on September 20 when he went to write his internal exams. They allegedly used sharp weapons to scratch his face and thrashed him too.

He then approached the University Grants Commission's anti-ragging helpline, which helped him register a police complaint. College authorities, however, denied that it was a case of ragging, saying instead that it was a difference of opinion between two parties outside the college premises and they had suspended both for indiscipline.

"We want to enquire into this and have asked both parties to come here and tell us their versions. We will take action based on the enquiry. We cannot comment until we hear the entire story," said R Janardhan, senior executive vice president of the Dayanand Sagar institution. "We have CCTV coverage in all departments and corridors, and will be examining that too before we come to a conclusion. Ragging is taken very seriously and, in fact, we haven't seen cases being reported here. This student too had not approached college authorities or his teachers about this incident," Janardhan said in an interview to CNN-IBN.

A police investigation is on and efforts are on to trace the accused who are absconding. The FIR lists offences under the Karnataka Education Act, besides crimes of voluntarily causing hurt with weapons and criminal intimidation under the Indian Penal Code.