- By Nidhi Giri
- Wed, 12 Feb 2025 12:25 PM (IST)
- Source:JND
Kerala Ragging Case: Five third-year nursing students from a Government Nursing College in Kottayam have been arrested under the Anti-Ragging Act after three first-year students - all from Thiruvananthapuram - filed a formal complaint with the Kottayam Gandhinagar police, detailing a series of violent acts that began in November 2024 and continued for nearly three months. The students have been arrested for allegedly subjecting their juniors to months of brutal physical and mental abuse.
As per the police, the first-year students were forced to stand naked while their seniors hung dumbbells from their private parts. The victims were also subjected to injuries using sharp objects, including a compass from a geometry box.
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The cruelty did not stop there. Lotion was applied to the wounds, causing pain. When the victims screamed in agony, the lotion was forcibly smeared into their mouths. The seniors allegedly filmed these acts and threatened the juniors with dire consequences, including jeopardising their academic futures, if they dared to report the abuse.
The complaint also claims that the seniors regularly extorted money from the juniors on Sundays to buy alcohol. Those who refused to comply were beaten. One student, unable to bear the harassment any longer, informed his father, who then encouraged him to approach the police.
The incident comes weeks after a 15-year-old schoolboy in Kerala's Kochi died by suicide. His mother has alleged that brutal ragging crushed her son and pushed him toward death. In a statement posted on Instagram, Rajna PM alleged that her son, Mihir Ahammed, was beaten up, verbally abused and forced to lick the toilet seat.Police have registered a case of suicide, but Mihir's mother has said she had written to Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan's office and the Kerala police chief and sought an immediate and impartial probe into her son's death.
Mihir died by suicide on January 15 after he jumped from their 26th-floor flat in Kochi's Thripunithara, barely an hour after he returned from school.