Seven students of an engineering college in Bengaluru were arrested on Wednesday and sent to judicial custody for allegedly ragging two juniors of theirs hailing from Kerala.
Officials attached to the Bommanahalli Police Station arrested the seven accused based on a complaint filed on August 18 by the hostel warden of Oxford College of Engineering, TM Gurumurthy.
The accused have been booked under Karnataka Education Act 1983, and sections 504 (kidnapping), 503 (criminal intimidation), 149 (every member of unlawful assembly guilty of offence committed in prosecution of common object) and 340 (wrongful confinement) of the Indian Penal Code.
The Hindu reported that the warden had lodged the complained after the two victims, who had joined the college just 10 days ago, opened up to him about the alleged ragging they were forced to endure.
According to the police complaint, the warden questioned the duo who weren’t in the hostel on August 17 and returned only at around 2.30 am on August 18. They then opened up to him and said that the seven seniors forcibly took them to a rented house in Mangammanapalya at around 8:30 pm on August 17 and forced them to clean the house, sing and dance against their will. They were also verbally abused and were threatened to keep quiet.
The complaint to the police also mentioned that the seniors were allegedly smoking ganja.
Following a 2009 Supreme Court verdict, a National Anti Ragging Help Line, along with other measures, was set up by the University Grants Commission to help eradicate ragging in college campuses in India. According to the website, a total of 3881 complaints have been received by the helpline from across the country.
To register complaints, one can call 1800-180-5522.
Between 2009 and December 2017, the number of ragging cases registered in Karnataka stood at 191, with 41 of them reported in 2017.
