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Days after Odisha student was found hanging, police say no proof of ragging yet
Deputy police commissioner Prateek Singh on Tuesday said they interrogated relatives, friends, batch mates, seniors, and juniors of the student but could not get any conclusive evidence
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Days after a 19-year-old undergraduate student was found hanging in her hostel room in Odisha’s Bhubaneswar on July 2, police have said they have found no proof yet that ragging pushed her to suicide even as her parents continued their sit-in seeking justice.
Deputy police commissioner Prateek Singh on Tuesday said they interrogated relatives, friends, batch mates, seniors, and juniors of the student but could not get any conclusive evidence of ragging. He said the investigators also probed whether the student was under depression and found that was not the case. “We are now sending her mobile phone to a lab in Singapore to retrieve data from the device,” said Singh. He added a confidential phone number has been provided for any information related to the case.
A handwritten note recovered from the student’s pocket said she was pushed to end her life while accusing her seniors of torturing her. “Most people think there is no ragging in our college, but three of my seniors could not let me stay in peace.” The note did not name the three.
Her parents staged a sit-in outside the college alleging inaction before police forcibly shifted them to another place in Bhubaneswar.
Another student of the same college alleged three of her seniors assaulted and forced her to do sit-ups at the same college. A 22-year-old undergraduate Dalit student alleged he was ragged and thrashed after refusing to give seniors money for liquor at another college. But the state government has continued to deny rising cases of ragging.
Odisha has been among five states, which has reported a bulk of ragging cases in the country. According to the University Grants Commission data, Odisha reported 60 ragging cases in the 2020-21 and 2021-22 academic years. An Odisha Police report said over 1,400 students died by suicide in Odisha in 2020, the second-highest in the country.
