Thiruvananthapuram: A 19-year-old nursing student from Kerala is battling for life after her senior students forced her to drink toilet cleaner that burnt her internal organs.
The incident happened in the first week of June as part of ragging or hazing in the hostel of Al Qamar College of Nursing in Gulbarga, a town in neighboring Karnataka state.
The girl was subjected to systematic verbal and physical abuse by senior students as she was from a Dalit community.
After the murderous attack, she was brought to Kozhikode, her hometown, and admitted to the government medical college hospital.
A doctor said she needed emergency surgery but it has to be postponed for six weeks since her internal organs were damaged. “It is too dangerous to conduct a surgery now.”
The girl’s parents alleged that Gulbarga police refused to register their complaint against the eight senior students, who are also from Kerala.
A relative of the girl to The Hindustan Times that they were forced to bring the victim to Kerala as the police and the college management tried to hush-up the case. “We were warned against speaking to anyone about this. Our first priority was to save her life … so we kept quiet” until now, he added.
When the girl collapsed after vomiting, the seniors took her to a private hospital in Gulbarga. But her condition deteriorated, forcing the college authorities to call her parents.
She joined the college four months ago with an educational loan. Since nursing seats are limited in Kerala, many girls go to private institutes in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu for nursing and midwifery diploma degrees.
AK Balan, the Kerala minister handling the Dalit and tribal issues, has promised to take up the matter with the Karnataka government so that guilty could be punished. He said the government would pay the girl’s medical bills.
Mild ragging is common across college campuses in India, a British legacy brought from its elite public schools. But extreme harassment exists in equal parts too despite state governments enacting anti-ragging laws, the Hindustan Times says.
The menace has driven many freshers to suicide. A Supreme Court report says college authorities seldom report even extreme cases to police.