Under the shadow of 2023 hostel death, another student files ragging complaint in Kolkata's Jadavpur University

The new allegation comes a year after a first-year Bengali Honors student Swarnodip, who allegedly faced severe ragging, mysteriously fell to death from the balcony of his hostel room inside Jadavpur University and his naked body was discovered, triggering a statewide outrage.

According to a Times of India report, the complainant filed a written complaint with the UGC and university authorities. JU's anti-ragging squad is looking into the case and probing the allegations.

"The anti-ragging squad has taken up the case and an investigation has started," a JU official was quoted as saying by the Times of India.

"The incident took place on Aug 2 when an ex-student of the power engineering department called me inside the union room and started verbally abusing me. Soon, he was joined by six others from the printing, civil, pharmacy and electrical engineering departments.

They started threatening me, snatched my phone, forced me to unlock it and kept on checking my private messages and call logs. They charged me about the incident that took place on July 25 on the campus when some of our seniors and fellow batchmates confronted two of the pass-out students of being accused of previous incidents of ragging and violent activities because we want our university to be ragging-free," the student stated in his complaint, according to the report.

The victim stated that he was seized by the neck and forced to write a letter, adding that he was instigated by his seniors to confront them against ragging, according to the report.

Expressing disappointment over the university's failure to maintain a ragging-free environment, the student said he felt unsafe and afraid.

2023 ragging allegation

Last year, Swarnodip Kundu, 18, fell fatally from the hostel's second floor on the JU campus. He succumbed to multiple wounds at a nearby city hospital.

Kundu, a resident of Bogulia in Nadia district, was a first-year student in the Bengali Honours stream. He died after allegedly falling from the second-floor balcony of his hostel though mystery still shrouds over what happened that day.

Image courtesy: File image/IBNS

According to the FIR, the teenager fell off the balcony and died during treatment at KPC Medical College.

Hours after the incident, another fresher had come out with his claims of suffering, saying that ragging forced him to quit the prestigious institution.

A year has passed, but the JU authorities are yet to take action on the identified students who ragged Swarnodip, according to reports in a local English daily.

The father of the deceased has said the university has only issued a show-cause notice to the identified students.

He told The Telegraph, "JU show-caused the students implicated in the committee report, that, too, only after the education minister Bratya Basu in late July said he would speak to the JU authorities about the inaction.

"We don’t know when JU will announce the punishment and we will get justice."

JU interim Vice-Chancellor Bhaskar Gupta said the university is waiting for the reply to the show-cause letters.

Kundu’s parents and friends had alleged that he had been a victim of ragging.

"The show cause should have been wrapped up much earlier... As the university is taking time to act, complaints of harassment of students keep emerging from the same hostel. A postgraduate first-year student had to quit the hostel recently," the father told the daily.