Alappuzha: The teenage student shudders as she recalls her horrific experience during her early days at a vocational college she had joined a fortnight ago.
“Eight of them stormed into my hostel room and made me stand on my knees. They pushed me on the cot and began beating me. They twisted my hands, hit on my shoulders,” narrated the student on the ragging by her hostel-mates who allegedly were associated with the Students’ Federation of India (SFI).
Soon, the student rushed to the hostel matron for help. “I begged before her to ring up my home. At this, she said dismissively, ‘Aren’t such things common in a hostel?’ She advised me not to tell my family such matters. A teacher who came to me later on learning about the incident, too, spoke the same,” the victim said, sitting at her house at Poonkavu in coastal Alappuzha.
The girl was even ousted from the Government Polytechnic College at Vandiperiyar in Idukki district.
She joined the college on September 3 . “That day, senior girl students came to me and said that I will have to go with senior male students if they asked me to. Though I said I had some physical issues, they dragged me out and made me scale the hills down to join a students’ agitation. Somebody pushed me; I fell down. At this, male students also joined in reprimanding me,” she added. “Around 8 pm, when my father called me on the office phone, the senior students gathered around me, threatening me not to reveal the incidents. My father somehow came to know about it. He reached the college later that night. He and I complained to the principal and the police. What ensued was my dismissal.”
The girl said, quoting the principal, that the college had sent her a letter dated September 11, asking her to furnish the transfer certificate. But on the next day she was not at home. “We were away at Vandiperiyar, where the anti-ragging council had asked us to give our statement in the case. So, we didn’t get the letter promptly,” the student claimed. “The letter, as we saw it later, hadn’t stated the date we were to appear in college. The idea simply was to dismiss me.”
“On September 12, when I was in college to give my statement, we were threateningly surrounded by local CPM leaders and activists of the party-affiliated SFI. We got back our lives only because we were provided protection by the police, who, too, were surrounded,” she said. “The assaulters enjoyed silent support from the principal.”
So far, neither the principal nor any authority from the college has enquired the state of the student and her family, she said. “All the time, the principal’s behaviour to us was cruel,” the student added. “Everyone insulted me. They all snatched away my chance to study. There should be an inquiry against it. I have to regain my right to study.”
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