Viral video: A video of rats scurrying in the frying pans and utensils in the kitchens of one of India's top tier institutes, IIT Roorkee, has taken the social media by a storm. The students claimed they found the rats in the mess of Radha Krishna Bhawan, when they went for their lunch on Friday.
They said the rodents were also inside rice sacks, a frying pan as well as a cooker which is used to prepare rice for the students of the Roorkee institute.
In the video, two rats can be seen in a frying pan, while a third one seems to be floating in a pressure cooker full of water. Several IIT Roorkee students, were stunned by the sudden discovery, fearing that they might have been fed rat-contaminated food.
Following the startling findings, hundreds of students gathered outside, and staged a protest against the deplorable kitchen conditions of the Radha Krishna Bhawan mess.
Meanwhile, IIT-Roorkee administration issued a statement after preliminary investigations, stating that the allegations made by the students were misleading. The statement claimed that the students had entered the mess late at night, and that the rats were found in a ‘close area’ of the mess, where empty utensils are kept.
“The footage shows rodents in a closed area of the mess where only empty utensils and non-edible items were stored. No food items were contaminated. The videos appear to be a deliberate attempt to misrepresent the situation," read the statement.
On Friday, Sonika Shrivastava, IIT-Roorkee's media in-charge said that ‘external special experts had been engaged to assess the situation’ to ‘prevent similar incidents in the future’, stated a report by India Today.
Similar incidents have happened in the past where rats, either dead or alive have been spotted in IIT messes. In 2017, an IIT Delhi student had found a dead rat in the coconut chutney that was served to him for breakfast. The student wrote on the hostel Facebook page that by the time he spotted the rat, many other students had consumed the chutney before that.
Catch all the Business News , Breaking News Events and Latest News Updates on Live Mint. Download The Mint News App to get Daily Market Updates.