After the death of a student at Jadavpur University (JU), West Bengal, allegedly due to ragging, students have come forward to share several instances of ragging that happen in the university’s main hostel.
Swapnadip Kundu, an 18-year-old first-year student at JU was found in a pool of blood on the ground in front of his hostel building on Wednesday, August 9. Kundu was discovered naked and injured. Following this, allegations of ragging have been made by the deceased's family.
On Friday, August 11, Sourabh Chowdhury, a former student at JU was arrested in an alleged connection with the death of Swapnadeep Kundu. As per reports, Swapnadeep graduated in 2022 but continued to stay in the hostel.
Not an isolated incident
Students have shared that the hostel block where Kundu was staying, better known as the ‘main hostel’, is occupied by former students of the university.
After the death, the university shared a notice directing all the former students and outsiders to vacate the main hostel and asked all the newcomers to temporarily shift to a separate hostel on the main campus.
“This is the fourth such notification in the last two years. Nothing has changed. The former students continue to inhabit the hostel. Most of them are from the engineering department and are even working at big IT companies. But they still continue to have political influence on student unions,” shared Subhayan Acharya Majumdar, former general secretary of the Arts Faculty Students Union (AFSU).
The AFSU has been putting pressure on the university administration to carry out an immediate investigation into the matter and to make the autopsy reports public to determine the cause of death.
“Now the university will try to say that the student was suffering from mental problems. Some are calling it suicide, some are calling it an accident but this is an institutional murder and it should be labelled as that,” he added.
Majumdar says that in the last few years, several cases of extreme ragging and bullying have come forward from the main hostel, which is located outside the university campus. In a post, he added that in the past years, the student union has urged the university several times to launch a sensitisation campaign and to remove the ex-students from campus, but no action has been taken.
Another student of the university, Sayan Sengupta, also shared his first-hand experience via a Facebook post dated August 10. Sengupta, who is currently a third-year student of BA in Comparative Literature at the university as stated by him in his post, was assigned the same hostel block as Swapnadeep in his second semester.
He wrote that on his first night in the hostel, he encountered a group of seniors and former students and was asked to give an ‘introduction’ to each student in the hostel.
“It will begin with my name, father's name, mother's name, then the birthday. Then 'Approximate Foundation Day (this day is nine months and ten days before my birth date; hope you all understand the hint). Then the complete CV of my primary, secondary, higher secondary. This format will end with a physical description. If you use a single English word in the whole speech, you will either get up, or you will have to bear the blow of a nail on the back of your knee. This 'intro' will continue till 2.30 am. How long should the 'intro' be given?” Sengupta’s Facebook post read.
He also described that several students were asked to fill water bottles for all senior students and maintain their hair in a military cut.
Owing to this ragging, Sengupta left the university hostel and started living in a PG. However, he continued to witness instances of ragging taking place on the JU campus, he added.