Less than 6% ragging cases become police complaints in two years

New Delhi: A Right to Information (RTI) request filed by a third-year law student revealed that the University Grants Commission (UGC) received 640 complaints of ragging in 2013. In the next year, the number fell to 543.

Maximum complaints in 2013 came from Rourkela’s Biju Patnaik University and Bhopal’s Maulana Azad Institute of Technology. In 2014, the charge was led by Patna’s Aryabhatta Knowledge University.

Unfortunately, only a few of these cases were converted into police complaints. In 2013, only nine first information reports (FIR) were lodged with the police, whereas in 2014, it was 57.

“This is horrendous. The figures received reveal how terrible the situation... It is shocking to learn that out of 1,183 complaints reported to UGC, (in the two years) FIRs were lodged in only 66 cases,” says Rohit Kumar, the RTI applicant. That’s a conversion rate of less than 6%. Perhaps the only silver lining was that no deaths were reported due to ragging in these two years.

In 2006, a Supreme Court-appointed committee led by former Central Bureau of Investigation director R.K. Raghavan declared ragging a criminal offence. In 2009, following a judgment by the apex court, the UGC set up a central crisis hotline and an anti-ragging database. UGC guidelines now make it mandatory for education institutions to register an FIR within 24 hours of a ragging complaint.

“Every year since 2009, we publish a booklet which is distributed among students detailing how ragging is a criminal offence. Apart from this, we have an anti-ragging control room which is manned 24X7. We are required to immediately attend to any complaint if made,” explains professor J.N. Kaul, chief proctor, Amity University, Noida. According to him, most institutes now have a zero-tolerance policy towards ragging and this is the only way forward to deal with the menace. Nearly 45,000 institutes around the country have implemented similar measures.

Ragging was generally considered to be a harmless act of familiarisation between senior and junior students. However, over the years, it deteriorated into a sordid mess of physical abuse, humiliation and emotional torture. In 2009, Aman Kachroo, a first-year medical student in Himachal Pradesh was beaten to death by senior students during one such session. His previous complaints about excessive violence at the hands of his seniors was not acted upon.

“I was ragged very badly during my first year of law school (in 2012). From being pulled up to not talking respectfully enough to seniors to being slapped on my way to class just because a senior could, it was the most traumatic experience of my life,” recalls a final-year law student who did not wish to be identified. His attempts to gain support among other seniors and even his classmates yielded no results; in fact, they only led to more intense humiliating experiences. “I finally filed a complained with the UGC and overnight, things changed. That’s when I realised that the provision to deal with this was very strong but students need to have courage.”

What should be a casual ice-breaking experience often becomes a power play. “Ragging comes from a place of identity formation, a sense of building your own self,” explains Shivangee Sen, assistant counsellor at Tagore International School in New Delhi. According to her, late teen years and early adulthood are times of extreme insecurity, and ragging becomes an outlet for expression as well as power. “In our school, we have a five-week session on bullying, where we deal with everything from assertiveness to the bystander effect.”

However, inspite of the change in law and the massive awareness campaign, ragging is a menace, which as RTI reveals, continues to haunt the corridors of higher learning in India.