Five held in ragging case to be expelled: Min

The five students were arrested on Tuesday for allegedly assaulting and ragging a group of first-year students and extorting money from them

Kochi: Kerala health minister Veena George said on Friday that action against five senior nursing students arrested for the brutal ragging of their juniors in Kottayam will not be limited to their suspension, indicating that they were likely to be expelled from the state-run college.

The five students were arrested on Tuesday for allegedly assaulting and ragging a group of first-year students and extorting money from them at the Government Nursing College in Kottayam. (HT PHOTO)

The five students were arrested on Tuesday for allegedly assaulting and ragging a group of first-year students and extorting money from them at the Government Nursing College in Kottayam. The college suspended the accused on Tuesday amid widespread outrage and videos of the incident doing the rounds.

“It’s a cruel episode. It shocks the human conscience and words fail to describe the monstrosity of it. After a few seconds of the visuals of the torture, I stopped watching. (The accused) have been suspended now, but the maximum possible action by the medical education department will be taken. The action will not be limited to their suspension alone. It should be a message for others also. I have given orders for maximum action to be taken including their expulsion,” George told reporters in Thiruvananthapuram.

She said that a team from the district medical education (DME) department visited the college and its hostel premises on Friday to collect more information and statements from officials and other students about the torture that went on there in the name of ragging.

“The college officials said that the students did not complain of ragging even once. But still, there are CCTV cameras there. Senior students used to visit the rooms occupied by their juniors. So was their someone supervising the goings-on in the hostel? These details need to come out. The team from the DME has been directed to take action based on the findings,” the minister said.

Ragging is banned in India under Prohibition of Ragging Act, 2011. The University Grants Commission defines it as an act of physical or mental abuse targeted at another student on grounds of colour, race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation etc and passed a circular in 2018 saying universities must adhere to the anti-ragging regulation passed notified by the UGC and punish the perpetrators accordingly. The Supreme Court has said that admission prospectus in every college clearly states that if a student is not able to give satisfactory explanation on charges of ragging against him/her, they will be expelled.

Five students of the nursing college were arrested by the Gandhinagar police in Kottayam on Tuesday for inflicting brutal torture on their juniors. The accused students, according to the complaint, stripped the victims naked, used dumbbells to inflict injuries to their private parts, caused bleeding by poking their body with sharp instruments such as compasses and dividers, and applied lotion on the wounds to exacerbate the pain.

Visuals of the alleged torture, that went on for nearly three months starting November 2024, surfaced on social media this week.

According to the father of one of the students, the torture began after one of the juniors declined to pay money to the seniors. The father said that the accused students routinely extorted the juniors to buy liquor and often threatened them at knife-point if they refused.

Lakshmana Perumal, father of one of the first-year students who were ragged, said, “My son told me that the accused seniors would extort money from them every month to purchase alcohol. He said they threatened to harm him and others if they spoke about this outside.”

The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) took cognisance of the case and sought an action-taken report from the police within 10 days. The central panel called the actions of the accused students “morally reprehensible and illegal” and termed the incident a “severe violation of human rights”.