No torture anymore, be the ideal senior
HOW tragic, sad and outrageous that torture by a group of students has claimed the life of a bright second-year student of the College of Veterinary and Animal Sciences in Pookode, Wayanad, in the second week of February!
It was in the inner courtyard of the college hostel that the group allegedly held a “trial” of 20-year-old J S Sidharthan during which he was also allegedly tortured.
On February 18, Sidharthan was found hanging in the hostel. The suspected suicide has rocked the state and created a political firestorm.
The post-mortem report revealed that the boy was subjected to brutal attacks by senior students for two to three days.
He had sustained multiple blunt injuries, including tramline contusion, (an injury as from a blow with a blunt instrument in which the subsurface tissue is injured but the skin is not broken), for two to three days, indicating assault on the body”, the report said.
The report also has many more aspects of the injuries, described in medical terms that a common man will find difficult to comprehend. Hence, not detailed here.
Sidharthan of Nedumangad, near Thiruvananthapuram, was found hanging in his hostel’s bathroom on February 18.
Siddharth’s is the latest example of the infectious trend in violence and extreme brutality on our campuses. Whether it is a suicide or murder, allegations that seniors and classmates were behind this horrendous incident deserve serious attention.
According to the Supreme Court of India, "Ragging is any disorderly conduct, whether by words spoken or written, or by an act which has the effect of teasing, treating or handling with rudeness any student, indulging in rowdy or indisciplined activities which cause or are likely to cause annoyance, hardship or psychological harm or to raise fear or apprehension thereof in a fresher or a junior student and which has the effect of causing or generating a sense of shame or embarrassment so as to adversely affect the psyche of a fresher or a junior student."
There have been several legal and awareness-raising measures against ragging, a process that disrupts pure education in colleges and creates a vicious circle of fear. The worrying fact is that this continues in one form or another.
It is high time political leadership, besides teachers and parents, came forward to free students from the clutches of such evil tendencies evident in our schools.
Also, leaders should not under any circumstance protect those who indulge in such unruly inhuman acts.
Parents, who have to live with the grief of the great loss, must get justice. They should be assured that a similar brutal incident will never happen again.
